


torn strings, iron bones

by deuxjolras



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: (in chapter 3), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Constipation, Fae & Fairies, Fae Magic, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Sharing a Bed, Trans Jaskier | Dandelion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:33:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24062905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deuxjolras/pseuds/deuxjolras
Summary: When Jaskier manages to get himself in even more trouble than usual with the local faerie court, his friends enlist Geralt to solve the problem. With a witcher on his side, it shouldn’t be too hard to convince them to let him keep his songs and the lute – but Jaskier might not be telling Geralt the whole truth about his entanglements with the fae.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 55
Kudos: 165





	1. encore

**Author's Note:**

> (There's some additional content information about the sex scene in this fic in the notes for [chapter three](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24062905/chapters/58203670).)
> 
> Tossing love (and bath salts) to my beta readers: [Troven](http://pillowfort.social/troven) has been a great help particularly for chapters three and four, so please, go shower [his wonderful art](https://www.pillowfort.social/troven/tagged/troven%20art) in love if you're inclined to do so. (Definitely worth checking out, though, especially if you like Good Omens!) [Zhenya](http://eventual-consistency.tumblr.com) is a wonderful enabler, and also a true Geraskier veteran who tried to sell me the appeal of the ship four or five years ago to no avail (and yet, here we are!) -- on top of all else, thank you for motivating me to finish this story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (jump to the end notes to see the mild content warnings for this chapter)

Jaskier dreams of peonies, of roses, of four-leaved clovers. He wakes up in piles of them and they’re spilling out of his mouth, out of his rib cage, choking him gently. Buttercups, dandelions, daisies, the smell of fresh grass – and then a hand grasps his shoulder, grounding him. Hand in his hair, combing, tucking a flower behind his ear. His grandmother is singing to him in a low voice while she weaves his long hair into a complicated four-strand braid, softly, never tugging too hard. The heat of a summer afternoon is trapped between the apartment buildings, defying the shadows that they cast. There’s a radio playing on a balcony, and a faerie is lying in ambush under the carpet beater, hoping to catch the cat’s tail again. _Say, pluck the herb where hawthorns quiver_ , his grandmother sings in a low voice, and the air is humming, or maybe it’s just drowsy with heat, and it’s the bumblebees in the jasmine tree next to them that are humming. _And wish a wish_ _to be_ _deliver_ _ed_ , Jaskier hears himself join in, his high voice weaving crystal clear waves around his grandmother's alto. The faerie lunges for the cat with a devilish screech, baring their claws and teeth, cackling when they miss. Heavy with exhaustion, Jaskier drifts back to sleep.

When he comes to again, the world is significantly colder and more painful. It doesn’t feel like he’s waking up, not really, there’s no moment of blissful ignorance or disorientation. Instead, he’s instantly aware that he’s curled up on the ground in a tense position, that his eyes are pressed shut, his fists clenched, and his head pounding. He’s being thrown into a moment he doesn’t belong in with full force, as if time has sped past in a time lapse and is now put to halt with screeching brakes, stretching like a rubber band, forcing him to stumble out of the roller coaster –

Or maybe the metaphors will have to wait.

With a groan, he opens his eyes and props himself up on his forearms with effort. His stomach protests at the motion and so does his circulation, threatening him with a heavy gray wall that rushes towards him. He takes a few shallow breaths. So unlike the grass and flowers of his dream, in the fabric of reality the air smells heavy like damp soil. As Jaskier’s eyes are slowly adjusting, he finds his hands and clothes covered in it, even tastes it on his tongue, and for some reason, that’s what almost makes him retch again.

His legs are shaking as he pulls himself up into a standing position to look over the dug up field he's been left in. Dawn must have made the decision to break just a few moments ago: The trees in the distance are growing red tips, and the ground is breathing out cold morning fog. A small stream is murmuring somewhere nearby, disguised by bulrush and reed, and in the distance, there's the forest and a narrow dirt road. Next to Jaskier on the ground lies his lute, abandoned, dirty, and with broken strings, and a laugh that would have come out on the edge of hysteria hitches painfully in Jaskier’s sore throat. “Fuck”, he whispers, instinctively and uselessly reaching for his neck, mild panic rising and then slightly subsiding again when more than a gurgle comes out of his mouth.

This is definitely worse than last time, he thinks, his head swimming just a bit. He tries to breathe through his nose to keep down the laughter that stubbornly keeps bubbling in his chest and then, he spots his own hands, stomach twisting again at the sight: His fingers are caked in dried blood, and the skin of his fingertips is hanging off in –

As if set off by the sight, the dull, but bone-deep pain registers with Jaskier and he closes his eyes in order not to have to keep looking. Memories of the last night are slowly flooding back in, but he doesn't feel like acknowledging them just yet. Instead, he fumbles for the phone in his pockets, and that’s when another surge of panic hits him. Suddenly, his flayed fingertips are not efficient enough in unlocking the screen, but then, when it finally lights up, smeared in dirt, almost blinding, the display shows the same date he remembers last seeing.

He lets out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding and, before he can stop himself, it morphs into that hoarse, painful, unhinged laughter he’d been holding back. Imagine, he thinks, if he’d found himself one hundred years into the future just because he –

His eyes come to rest on his lute, and he shoves that thought far into the back of his mind with resolve, and dials the number with fingers that are only slightly trembling.

“Jaskier? What’s going on?”, Yen's voice groans from the speaker, and in a sobering moment, Jaskier remembers it’s four in the morning and he has no idea where he is, geographically speaking. “Ten seconds. I'm listening.”

“Well”, Jaskier says, hesitating. “I seem to be in need of a ride again.”

* * *

Jaskier sighs contently as he dips his fingers into the cold and soothing concoction Triss has brewed up for him. Already, the pain is fading, and he watches with fascination as the skin on his fingertips begins to mend in real time. They're sitting at the kitchen table of their shared apartment, and despite the fact that Jaskier has already – full of remorse – thrown away his ruined jacket, he still seems to be distributing dirt and blood over all surfaces he touches. Yen, on her third coffee, alternates her glares between Jaskier, the soil that she has managed to get under her fingernails, and, for some reason, the apartment door. She looks as if she’s desperately trying to find someone to blame for the fact that it’s 7:30 and she’s just made a two-hour car drive just because Jaskier was abducted by faeries again.

Jaskier would very much like to apologize for the inconvenience, but it’s not like he endorses abduction as an appropriate measure in this case. After all, all he did was lose his cool and try to twist their words around for a change. And it _has_ to be about the lute, doesn’t it? They wouldn’t –

“So they made you play and sing all night long”, Triss says with a compassionate smile that he’s not sure he deserves, which is more than he can handle right now after already receiving a tea that made his vocal chords heal in thirty seconds flat. “But do you have any idea why they would do that?”

Jaskier hesitates, watching through the wall of the water glass as he taps his freshly mended fingertips against each other. Items and actions, he thinks, alongside to the rhythm. Lutes and lutenists. One possibility highly inconvenient, but probably the most logical, and the other –

Yen looks at him as if she’s reading his mind, which he sincerely hopes she’s not. “Just spit it out”, she sighs, and he decides.

“Well, it might be about the lute”, he says, only for Yen to immediately interrupt him again.

“I fucking knew it – _'Oh no, the lute's not fae,_ _it’s just something I made up for the song’_ ”, she copies in a very bad impression of Jaskier's own intonation. “' _I bought it at the store like a normal person, because even I'm not stupid enough to take a lute from a fucking faerie!'_ ”

There’s a small pause.

“I never said the last part”, Jaskier clarifies.

Triss sighs, and her palpable disappointment gets to Jaskier, so he tries to rectify the situation and his good image in her mind by offering some additional information. “Look, they came onto me with the fucking lute, wanting to trick me into a bargain like, _'_ _H_ _ello,_ _good Sir, might I interest you in_ _immortal fame and_ _acquiring the_ _abilities of a siren?'_. So of course I said no, like any sensible person would, but then I thought –”

Jaskier pauses dramatically and looks back and forth between his friends to gauge their reactions. They’re not very encouraging: Yen has buried her face in her hands, which is uncalled for, he's pretty sure he's done stupider things in the past, and Triss is frowning with something akin to pity. Oh, well. Might as well spit it out, then.

“I was angry at them for trying to trick me in such a clumsy way, frankly”, Jaskier complains, letting a little bit of his disappointment seep into his voice. “So...I might have twisted their words a teeny tiny little bit and...took the lute from them.”

Yen groans loudly, and, well, now that he’s heard it out loud, it _does_ sound like something that would piss the fuckers off enough to warrant two abductions, wouldn’t it? He offers her a smile. “Took them over a year to figure out how to reverse-trick me, so I'd say my wording was pretty sound.”

“It’s impossible to trick a faerie”, comes a gruff voice behind him and Jaskier nearly falls off his chair. He manages to catch himself by grabbing the edge of the table, which, good, he didn't land on his bum, but of course, as a consequence he spills Triss's potion all over his pants where it immediately sizzles and melts the color away. Goodbye, pants, he thinks gloomily, staring at his crotch, idly wondering if he should come up with a funeral pyre later.

And, well, fuck if he doesn’t know exactly who’s standing in their kitchen all of a sudden, even though it’s unclear to him how he got into the apartment. With slight disappointment in himself, Jaskier notes that he hasn’t even looked at him and his heart is already pretending he’s the one who just downed three espressos and not Yen. It's just not fair, is it? Of course, the one time Jaskier moves to a new city and finds an apartment and becomes friends with the immortal witches who are his roommates, it just has to turn out they got together after some guy got dumped by them in quick succession but was very determined to stay friends. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing per se if this guy wasn’t so gentle and dry-witted and ridiculously _idealistic_ while probably being able to lift Jaskier with one arm, or stopped by from time to time with black eyes, a bloodied sword in his hand and a gash from a claw or talon that causes him to remove his shirt in their kitchen to allow Yen or Triss to put a salve and a bandage on it. It's just, Jaskier thinks wistfully, suppressing a sigh, someone should have told him in advance that living in this apartment would come with the cost of having to face all that, and if Triss and Yen hadn’t complained about his emotional constipation multiple times already, Jaskier would definitely –

Okay, that's a lie, he still would. Something at least. If he ever showed any interest. Which he hasn’t, and most definitely won’t now, not with Jaskier sitting at the kitchen table in a binder and undershirt completely covered in dirt, staring at his own crotch.

“Geralt... _of Rivia_ ”, Jaskier says with false cheer nonetheless, finally looking up from the pants debacle to find him leaning against the fridge next to a clumsy drawing of a horse that Ciri made for Jaskier’s thirtieth birthday. It would frankly make for a charming picture if his arms weren’t crossed so firmly that his leather jacket looks in serious danger of tearing and he wasn’t frowning at Jaskier.

“Which is still not a real fucking place, just saying”, Jaskier presses on, because when has he ever been known to deal well with Geralt being taciturn and grumpy? He tilts his head slightly and smiles at him. “I’ve googled it countless times by now, which leads me to believe that you made it up, no matter if it’s on your fake ID or not. We’ve known each other for five years now and you still don’t want to tell me your real name. Why is that, I must wonder.”

Geralt doesn’t reply, and Jaskier can’t help but pick up the glance Yen shoots him that very clearly says, “Now is not the time to flirt with the pretty man.” Jaskier recognizes it because he’s been on its receiving end more often than he’d like to recall and decides to swallow the rest of his mediocre attempts at conversation, hard as it might be. Geralt walks over to the table and sits down on the spare chair next to him, staring intently at Jaskier for a few seconds, albeit not in a sexy way, judging by how his eyes linger on his fingers the longest and he sighs long-sufferingly afterwards. Then he pulls the lute that's lying on the table in all its sad and broken glory closer to himself, inspects it as well, and says, “Hm.”

“Indeed”, Jaskier agrees in a pitiful tone, “it’s been horribly roughed up, what a tragedy! And I do have to say, if I don’t end up getting at least the lute out of this whole fuckery, I’ll be really pissed off.”

He can’t help but note how everyone seems to avoid looking him in the eyes and, slightly nervous and unable to sit still now that he doesn’t have a healing potion to occupy himself with anymore, he slides off his chair.

“Jaskier”, Triss says in a suspiciously gentle voice, and Jaskier freezes mid-motion on his way to get a kitchen towel and a coffee mug for Geralt. He narrows his eyes.

Here it comes.

“This is the second time you’ve been roughed up in a month. We think you really have a problem this time. Geralt can help you.”

“Um, not to be rude, but how long exactly have you been here?”, Jaskier asks him.

“Long enough to hear that you tried to rob a faerie of their lute”, Geralt grumbles. The look he gives him is highly disapproving, but, well, he’s looking at Jaskier, and Jaskier can’t help but smile at him. Geralt’s face doesn’t show any reaction, but there’s a slight tint on his cheek, almost as if he’s blushing a little bit, and Jaskier wonders –

“ _Jaskier_ ”, Yen says sharply, snapping him out of it. He looks back and forth between her, Triss, and Geralt, trying to make sense of what’s going on. “What is this?”, he finally asks, and Yen bares her teeth in what can barely count as a grin.

“An intervention.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> **Content Warnings** : Depiction of disorientation and lapse of memory after a character wakes up in an unfamiliar location. Semi-graphic description of a minor injury which is later healed without repercussions.  
> (return to top)
> 
> The next chapter will be up on Sunday. Please feel free to talk to me on Tumblr or Pillowfort in the meantime! (@threephasebird)


	2. at second glance

“Well, that one went down the drain pretty quickly”, Jaskier says with false cheer as they pull up to the pizza place. If he’s gripping the door handle a little bit tighter than necessary to combat his overwhelming carsickness, he’ll blame it on Geralt’s driving which has only gotten worse after their failed attempt at returning Jaskier’s lute. As soon as they come to a halt, he’s out in the parking lot and inhaling deeply to purge the stale, weirdly metallic-smelling air from his lungs. While he steps from one foot to another and rubs his arms to combat the cold, he idly wonders what Geralt transports in his car on a daily basis to cause this smell.

It takes Geralt a few moments to put on the handbrake, check something in his glove compartment and wrap his swords in a blanket, throwing them on the backseat. “Ehh, I guess that brings us back to start, then, huh?”, Jaskier says when Geralt finally gets out and locks the doors with a mechanical key – apparently, his car is just as old as it looks. He tries his best to ignore the uneasiness that’s been pooling in his stomach ever since the faerie delegation disappeared back into the hill without a word. Instead, he diverts the lingering anxiety to rubbing a piece of shirt fabric between his fingers and takes a step closer to Geralt. “ _’It’s an easy fix’_ ”, he says in an imitation of Geralt’s deep voice that’s, well, better than Yen’s imitation of Jaskier, he dare say that he’s got that going for himself at least. “ _’We just have to return the lute.’_ Don’t get me wrong, Geralt, I’m grateful that I didn’t get my arse kicked _again_ in fast succession, so thank you very much for strategically whipping out your steel sword in the right moment, it’s very much appreciated, but why exactly –”

Geralt just grunts as he falls into step with him. Turns out it’s still his preferred form of communication even after spending several days together to plan a visit to the local faerie court, which you’d think might get the people involved to open up a little bit. Joke’s on him, though, because Jaskier is fairly confident that he’s getting more and more well-versed at deciphering Geralt noises. He’s pretty sure, for example, that this one combined with the glare at Jaskier’s bare arms, means that he thinks it’s his own fault he’s freezing for not bringing a jacket on their little road trip.

It’s clearly the fair fuckers’ fault, though, for tearing the only jacket to shreds that would have went with the forest green button-down.

Geralt holds the door to the pizza place open and waits for Jaskier to pick a seat by the window, which is surprisingly gentleman-like. His witcher training must have entailed a lesson titled “How To Always Act Like A Knight From A Fairy Tale Even If Someone Is High-Key Annoying”, but it’s not like Jaskier’s going to complain about that. Again, something uncomfortable prods at the back of his mind at the thought of Geralt spending five days trying to help him with his problem, and threatening the court with his sword to protect him, and being _nice_ on top of everything – because maybe Jaskier –

Let’s just say, he thinks, slightly wound up, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Geralt hasn’t listened to Jaskier’s album and he’s is starting to have an increasingly bad feeling about it, with the court not accepting back his lute and whatnot.

“It didn’t _work_ ”, Geralt says with emphasis, as if he’s been reading his thoughts, which, fuck, can witchers do that as well? Jaskier would like to think that they can’t because otherwise Geralt surely would have arrested him for his crimes already. With a barely stifled giggle, Jaskier remembers the time Yen tried to read his mind and later compared it to the feeling of getting motion sick in a roller coaster while twenty different movies are playing at the same time.

Luckily, Geralt has made a little pause while Jaskier zoned out, as if he’s still figuring out what to say next. “– because they didn’t _want_ the lute back.”

The uncomfortable feeling at the back of Jaskier’s mind drops to his stomach like a sudden, leaden weight. “What?”, he says, still, feigning surprise. “And here I was, listening for five whole days to you telling me how _‘incredibly stupid and reckless’_ I was for tricking them.”

“ _Trying_ to trick them”, Geralt corrects him and hands Jaskier the pizza menu. Their fingers lightly brush against each other and they both freeze for a split second, and then Geralt stifles what almost looks like a small smile into yet another frown and adds, “And it was four and a half days.”

Encouraged by the smile, Jaskier bats his eyelashes at him over the edge of his menu. “Seeing how they let me keep the lute, I’d say I tricked them rather successfully. And since you protected me so heroically, thrusting every elf far back on their shelf”, he adds with a sly grin, “they let us go! So, who knows, maybe that’s all that was needed?”

He can’t help but let a genuine tinge of hope slip into his voice at the question, even if he knows it not to be true, having lived through enough minor inconveniences to know that. And with the lute not doing the trick, there’s not exactly a plethora of other explanations left, which probably means –

– _possibly_ means –

“It’s not possible to trick them”, Geralt says, a bit exasperated. “They’re either keeping the lute as leverage or they’re after something else entirely.”

“I don’t know why you keep saying this”, Jaskier complains, “when I’ve done it before. Multiple times.” Not for something as valuable as a lute, of course, but for information, or just to annoy them, but he’s hesitant to elaborate on that, lest he solidifies Geralt’s impression that he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing. It causes Geralt to frown at him, though. “Did you make a deal with them?”, he asks.

Jaskier narrows his eyes. “What”, he says uneasily, trying very hard to ignore the way his stomach twists, “are you on about.”

“Triss told me your music has become more popular lately”, Geralt says carefully, and Jaskier has to firmly shut his mouth to keep in laughter that would probably border on unhinged again. “You didn’t make a deal to improve your singing voice, or your lute playing, or ask for fame or whatever people do when they try to dabble with them?”

Jaskier lets out a slightly shivery breath. “I didn’t”, he says a bit too quickly, too relieved that Geralt is on the wrong track. “I’m not stupid”, he adds, glaring at Geralt as he raises his eyebrows a little bit, “I don’t bargain for personal favors. I took the lute because I wanted the lute, nothing more, and it worked, so, _hey_.”

“Good”, Geralt says. He almost looks relieved, offering a small smile to Jaskier. It’s the most beautiful thing and Jaskier wants to keep it for a while longer, at least until Geralt says, empathically, “It _didn’t_ work, though.”

Before Jaskier can stutter an offended response, a cute waiter wearing a bright orange plastic apron steps to their table, rustling, to pick up their takeaway orders. Somehow, Jaskier is not surprised to find that Geralt’s favorite pizza is plain Margherita and that he orders a small sparkling water while they wait. They fall into silence while the waiter shouts their orders into the kitchen and retrieves Geralt’s water, and Jaskier can’t help but admire a bit how the afternoon sun paints a halo on the soft white hair framing his face, and how a few wayward curls are brushing over his cheekbones. Geralt tilts his head at his water glass when he receives it and, for some reason, also absentmindedly dips his index finger in it, which is totally okay, Jaskier thinks; at least he removed his leather gloves when they came in, and he’s not going to think too hard about why that just made his heart jump.

Behind Geralt, on the other side the dusty panorama window that’s been decorated with broad orange stripes and the words “PIZZA PIZ A PIZZ” what must have been a hundred years ago, Jaskier’s attention gets caught by a small commotion. There’s only a handful of people outside during this time on a weekday, but all of them stumble over their own feet in the same spot front of the laundry shop across the narrow street. They look mildly confused afterwards, taking a few seconds to inspect the pavement without noticing the spindly-legged faerie who has tripped them, and then continue to go about their business.

The faerie looks up and makes direct eye contact with Jaskier, splitting their face into a grin. Quickly, Jaskier looks back into his menu.

“You’ve had the second sight all your life?”

“Are you trying to make small talk?”, Jaskier blurts out before he can help himself.

Geralt snorts, then – poorly, to be quite honest – disguises the noise as a grunt. “I’m interrogating you”, he says.

“You’re doing good”, Jaskier says with a smile, “although, I gotta say, maybe it’s not the most informative question. At least, I don’t know many people who get the second sight later in their life, and you’ll have to admit that I don’t really look like someone who would roll in clover fields all night long hoping to catch a four-leaf one, or rub milk and honey on their eyes – or whatever”, he adds a bit lamely. To Geralt, extensive knowledge about learning how to see faeries might sound suspicious, even if it’s just residuals from his research as a teenager. Before Yen and Triss, after all, he had never met anyone who could see them as well, and his grandmother had been the only one to believe him in the first place.

“Most people who have it prefer to live a quiet life”, Geralt remarks.

“Yyyeah”, Jaskier waves it off with a little flourish of his hands. “Nah, I don’t really do that. Tried it, found it to be inadequate for me, you _know_ me. Also, the little fuckers and I used to get by until three weeks ago. I get my stuff stolen and half of my hookups ruined, and in turn I throw steel tacks at them when they get too rowdy, the usual drill.”

“Hm”, Geralt says and looks at him intently, and, well –

There it is, the thread that’s finally unraveling the lute theory: The unsettling accuracy with which the moment things started to go south coincides with the moment his album blew up, and not with him stealing the lute, despite what he’s been trying to tell himself. And, fuck, they’re in a goddamn pizza place with a three-star rating on Yelp and Jaskier is not ready to face the possibility that he didn’t just go against the very first rule his grandmother ever taught him – “Don’t attract their attention” – but that he kicked it with his feet, potentially fucking up his life forever, which, _fun_.

A second passes.

“Sounds stressful”, Geralt ventures.

The spindly-legged faerie from outside smacks against the window with a nasty grin, startling both of them. They’ve got frog fingers that don’t look particularly dangerous, just sticky, and sharp teeth that very much do. Before he can stop himself, Jaskier bares his teeth and hisses at the faerie and, probably due to sheer luck and the element of surprise, they lose grip on the glass, stumble backwards and disappear.

When he looks back at Geralt, he’s staring at him intently again, like he’s trying to record an x-ray image with his eyes. “That always work for you?”

Jaskier shifts, carefully removing his hands from the tabletop and placing them on his knees under the table. “Sometimes?”, he says vaguely. “I don’t exactly do it often, only when they already know I can see them.”

“Hm”, Geralt says.

“Do you kill faeries?”, Jaskier asks curiously.

Geralt keeps looking at him, tilting his head slightly. “Trying to enlist me?”, he deadpans.

Despite himself, Jaskier snorts. “Just wondering.”

“They’re sapient. I don’t”, Geralt says simply. “But I would if it was in self-defense.”

 _But w_ _hat counts as self-defense_ _for_ _someone_ _that’ll attack_ _anyone who looks_ _at them_ _the wrong way_ _?_ hangs on the tip of Jaskier’s tongue, but he swallows the question, not wanting to be difficult again.

“What about vampires?”, he asks instead.

“Sapient”, Geralt grunts.

“Have you ever met one?”

“Yes. Then he became my best friend. Why are you suddenly interested in my job?”

Jaskier smiles, ridiculously charmed by the idea that someone who stays best friends with all of his exes would also immediately befriend a vampire. “ _'_ _S_ _uddenly’_ , he says.” He shakes his head in a show of disbelief and sighs dramatically. “I've been trying to get information – something, _anything_ – out of you for the past five years. For example, you know when you come to pick up Ciri after a hunt and I will say something like _‘How was it’_? That's me conveying interest in what you are doing, but thank you for noticing.”

“Hm”, Geralt says as if he's contemplating that.

“And after all this time, I still have no idea how your witchering actually works. Do you just, like, get postings for monsters on your phone?”

“I don't have a phone”, Geralt says.

Jaskier gasps loudly, maybe to drown out the little voice in his head that reminds him that this makes it more probable that Geralt really hasn’t visited his Twitter lately, because if he’s right, Geralt won’t be able to help him and he’s not sure if he can bear his inevitable disappointment.

Huh, he’s really shoveling himself deeper into the shit with every minute passing.

* * *

“I don’t think you’re safe here anymore”, Geralt says. They’re in Geralt’s horrible, unventilated vehicle again, and Jaskier is carsick, and now that they’ve left the liminal space of the low-quality pizza place and he’s about to go back to his apartment, it’s harder not ignore his own failure.

Fuck if he doesn’t know it. Fuck if he doesn’t want to acknowledge it because it’ll mean he truly, _truly_ fucked up the one time things were actually going well for him.

Geralt holds his pizza carton out for him, and Jaskier looks at him blankly for a few seconds. “Let me just pay you back”, he finally says, reaching for his wallet.

“Leave it”, Geralt grunts, but Jaskier is already stuffing a tenner in his hand. He breathes once, deeply, and feels like choking on the air. “Thanks for the lovely company”, he says, still trying for a smile. “And, you know, for trying to help me.”

“Jaskier”, Geralt asks. “What are your songs about?”

He’s too smart for his own good. Jaskier’s hand lingers on the door handle of the car, drumming a beat so fast he’s almost trembling.

Then he says, “I really do appreciate it”, and gets out. In the courtyard of the apartment building, his breath paints clouds into the air as he looks around wildly. For the time being, all seems to be calm, apart from the woman with the hollow back and the spinning wheel in the landlord’s garage. As always, he tries to not let on that he can see her, but she still turns her head in his direction to look at him intently. Her hands keep spinning, not missing a beat.

Geralt gets out of the car as well. “You’re not safe”, he repeats. “In this city. In general. Unless you can give them what they want.”

 _I_ _f they want something and it’s something you can give without being hurt too much,_ _give it_ , Jaskier thinks – another one of the lessons his grandmother taught him over and over again as a child. Only back then, she was thinking about faeries bothering him for prized, but ultimately harmless possessions. He remembers crying over gifting them a favorite doll, a pearlescent hairbrush, a set of marbles. He remembers refusing to gift them his bunny, and gaining the bald spot behind his ear where his hair won’t grow back in return.

Strange laughter escapes from Jaskier’s throat again, and all of his uneasiness seems to creep into the noise, amplified by echoing from the walls of the surrounding buildings. Suddenly, with Geralt saying the words out loud just like that, as if he hasn’t been pushing the very thought to the back of his mind for three whole weeks, Jaskier feels very tired. “Love me some impending doom”, he says, not hitting the mark on the cheerful tone he was going for, and when Geralt just stares at him blankly, he sighs and mumbles, “Let’s go inside?”

“Someone else in your family have the second sight?”, Geralt asks behind him as they walk up the narrow stairs to the fourth floor. Jaskier trails his fingertips over the handrail and looks over his shoulder. “Are you still interrogating me? If they did, they probably wouldn’t have disowned me”, he jokes.

“Happens to a lot of people who have it”, Geralt says gently. “Bad family relations, I mean.” He waits as Jaskier fumbles with the apartment key and Jaskier shoots him a curious sideways glance, watching him lean up against the dirty white wall with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched. He looks pained, somehow.

“Well”, Jaskier says, drawing the syllable out as he finally pushes the door open and waving the sentiment off with a flourish, “they would have found plenty of other reasons. Come in.”

Yen and Triss aren’t home, and an awkward silence encompasses them as they kick off their boots. There’s a million different sentences sizzling on the top of Jaskier’s tongue but he swallows all of them, too encompassed in sudden nervousness at being alone with Geralt in the apartment and in leading him to his own room. He gets in first, leaving the door open for Geralt to follow, and quickly darting his eyes over his belongings, checking if there’s anything on display he doesn’t want him to see. Luckily, his room is tidy as always, his clothes hanging neatly in the open closet and his guitars and lute lying on their shelves. He’s not above admitting that he _likes_ his room, and as he brushes invisible specks of dust off his desk, he watches Geralt’s eyes taking in the colorful glass baubles and wind chimes in the window, the collection of clean, empty bottles in the wine cabinet, his instruments, the three screens on his desktop, the tasteful paintings hanging over his bed.

“Hm”, Geralt says.

“Judging my interior design?”, Jaskier asks with a smirk. “I usually get compliments for it when I bring someone here.” While he’s waiting for Geralt to reply, he pulls a stool next to his desk chair and sit down on it, dropping his pizza carton next to his keyboard and plopping it open unceremoniously.

“Just surprised”, Geralt replies after a moment. He regards the chair. “I didn’t think you’d be into hoarding shiny stuff.”

“Well, I gotta make the most out of living with two witches”, Jaskier says, patiently patting the chair until Geralt sits down and places his pizza next to Jaskier’s. “They’re afraid of them – don’t even dare to show up in the hallway or throw something down the chimney. Although they _do_ sometimes throw bird’s eggs against my windows, that’s why I never leave them open. Fuckers”, he adds empathically. “Anyway, when I moved in here and first saw Triss’s collection of crystal balls – impressive, isn’t it? – I _miiiiight_ have lost a tiny bit of my impulse control when it comes to decorating my room.” He folds a slice of pizza in half and shoves it into his mouth whole. “Sho, bo-om line”, he swallows, “am I overcompensating? Yes. Does it look good? I dare say so. It’s _really_ convenient living with Triss and Yen, more peace and quiet in a day than I’ve had in years, _ugh_. But of course, that’s not the reason I’m friends with them”, he adds hastily.

“I was wondering for a moment”, Geralt comments dryly.

They both chew on their respective pizzas for a moment, basking in the bland taste of three Yelp stars and a lot of olive oil, and weirdly enough, it’s in this moment that Jaskier realizes he doesn’t feel so bad anymore about telling Geralt the truth. It’s as if he’s accepted the inevitable when he invited him to his room, and at least, this way, he’s not alone when he has to face the full extent of it.

“So”, Jaskier says with a deep sigh, “I take it you haven’t listened to my album yet.” He looks around for something to wipe his hands on and, in lieu of it, just smacks his oil-free little finger on the keyboard multiple times to wake up his computer.

Geralt sighs as well. It sounds as if he’s bracing himself.

“The thing is”, Jaskier presses on while struggling to navigate the mouse with his little finger alone, “it blew up...a bit.” He gives Geralt a sideways glance as he opens up his Bandcamp. “ _Quite_ a bit. More than I thought. I made _money_ off it, can you believe?”

When Geralt doesn’t say anything, Jaskier just clicks on the first song. “Brace yourself”, he says, “you’re going to think I’m very stupid in a minute.”

* * *

While it probably takes a lot to surprise Geralt of Rivia, revealing to him that you have the second sight, wrote a six-track album detailing your encounters with the fair folk, which then proceeded to blow up on Twitter, and were subsequently surprised that you caught the little fuckers’ attention apparently does the trick. Judging by the little noises Geralt keeps emitting while he listens, especially so if you include a fantasy about performing for their court until you pass out and die – which is a bop, though, and Jaskier definitely noticed Geralt’s foot tapping along with it – followed by a ballad telling the story of how you found out the true name of the doe-legged faerie who lives in the supermarket across the block.

“I don’t understand”, Geralt says in the middle of the fourth track, a slightly embellished version of the story of how Jaskier got the lute. He brings a piece of pizza to his mouth and then gently lowers it down into the carton again, as if he needs his full focus for whatever he wants to say. “What did you _think_?”

Jaskier shrugs, not quite sure how to explain the sentiment of _eh, might as well go for it_. “Not a lot, actually”, he says lightly.

“It’s just that”, he continues when Geralt doesn’t react to that, just to fill the silence, “you know, I’ve had to deal with this shit for my entire life. Yes, they weren’t always so aggressive, but it’s not like they ever went easy on me. Stolen jewelry, broken guitars, smashed pots, riding my cat all night, all that jazz”, he lists, ticking the items off his fingers. “Makes everyone _love_ you, I can tell you, especially when you're the only one who can see them. So”, he smiles in a way that he, pessimistically, hopes is disarming, “can you really blame me for wanting a little...repayment?”

Geralt stares at him without blinking or moving his face in any other way, which really shouldn't be hot, or at the very least, Jaskier shouldn’t be noticing it in in this moment. “You made money off singing about faeries”, he says in a tone that's somehow chiding, disappointed, and disgruntled at the same time, which, wow. “So, yes. I can fully blame you.”

“I did make money off it, though”, Jaskier points out. “That’s the cool thing about it.”

“Congratulations”, Geralt says flatly. “But you also have a whole court of faeries who want you to play for them for the rest of their immortal lives.”

Once again, despite himself, Jaskier snorts and shakes his head at his deadpan tone. As Geralt turns his attention back to the last chord progressions of the lute song, he walks over to the window, leaning his hands on the radiator and peering outside through the baubles and wind chimes. As ever so often, the faerie with the grasshopper wings is sitting on the neighboring house’s chimney, making faces at him when they spot him, then digging their teeth back into the dead crow they’re munching on. For a brief moment, Jaskier is reminded of how his grandmother would tap him lightly on his shoulder when he got distracted by something only he could see, smiling and waiting until they were alone to ask him about it, and the rhyme she’d make him say to conquer his fear when he was witnessing something disturbing. _S_ _ay, pluck the herb where hawthorns quiver..._

“What am I supposed to do, then?”, Jaskier says over the soft sounds of the lute and his own voice on the speakers. “You say I’m not safe here. As I understand, the only thing that’ll satisfy them is me playing for them. Shall I just hand myself over, then?” He turns around, puts his hands on his hips and blows a strand of hair out of his eyes.

“That you’re not safe here is the _bad_ news”, Geralt says, turning in the chair to meet his eyes. “You caught too much attention. They will get to you eventually.”

“And the good news?”, Jaskier asks. “There’s good news, right? You saying it this way, _‘_ _that’s the_ _bad news’_ , implies that there’s good news and I’ll be really pissed if you tell me there isn’t.”

“There is”, Geralt says. “You just might not like it.”

“Go on then”, Jaskier sighs, “spit it out, Geralt.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed hearing more of Jaskier's Fae Entanglements(TM). The story is finished, but I'm still going through the last editing round, so the next chapter will be up on Wednesday. :)


	3. smoke and smother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains the sex scene indicated by the tags.  
> * there’s no penetrative sex happening  
> * neither Jaskier nor Geralt refer to Jaskier’s body in any specific terms  
> * there is no discussion about Jaskier being trans  
> * Jaskier keeps a binder on, which is just my personal judgment call based on my own experience and how strenuous the scene appeared to me, but is not meant to be generalized advice on binding.

Just before the last chorus begins, Jaskier closes his eyes and soaks it all up: The cheers, the clanking of glasses, the thrum of chatter in the pub, coming together in a delicious, exciting mix of noises. His fingers are dancing over the strings of his lute without him even having to think about it and his voice builds on top of it, weaves around it, falling into an almost-whisper at the lowest notes and an almost-whistle at the highest. The slight sheen of sweat from thrill and exhaustion plasters his hair onto his forehead and runs down his chest to where he has unbuttoned his jacket and shirt already. And then there’s the rush, the rush of feeling the eyes of a small crowd on him, spellbound, of _knowing_ he has their attention from the way they laugh and nod their heads and drum their little beats on the wooden tables, forgetting about their beers just for a moment and maybe shedding a silent tear – it’s fueling, enticing, it makes him feel as if he could go for weeks.

Laughter steals into his voice as he sings the last verse, the one where the narrator wakes up in a field, naked, clutching the lute he heroically stole from the faerie court, and unable to keep the smile off his face, he embellishes the notes, adding a few runs just to draw out the moment for a little bit longer. Fuck, he _missed_ this, didn’t even realize how much he missed it while he was holed up writing the album and then unable to perform it. Even now that he’s been doing it every few days for almost three weeks, he still can’t get enough. He feels like he’ll never have enough, not when the audiences _like_ him, not when they bask in his music and ask for encores. As he strums the last note of the final song and the applause wells up, Jaskier lets himself bask in how happy he is in turn.

It’s only when he’s already packed up his lute and is heading towards the bar for a pint or a chat that he spots Geralt again. He’s leaning against the wall in the corner of the room, holding a beer, watching Jaskier, and Jaskier stops in his tracks for a second, unable to do anything but stare back as his heart starts to drum a rabbit pulse in his chest. It’s a different bar and a different city, but he feels like he’s experiencing a déjà vu as he slowly makes his way through the crowd, grabbing his drink without taking his eyes off Geralt.

“Geralt of Rivia”, he announces as soon as he’s in earshot, spreading his arms in a dramatic gesture. He’ll have none of the assorted and conflicting thoughts that are popping up at the sight of him, thank you very much. “What are you doing here, showing up at one of my gigs again? Are you following me, you scamp?”

Geralt still hasn’t blinked and he’s looking at Jaskier as if he’s grown a pair of horns since they last met. A few seconds pass. Then, right when Jaskier is about to continue speaking, he grumbles, “Contract nearby.”

Coincidentally, that’s also what he said when he showed up four days ago. And the time before that. And the time before that. Somehow, it feels fitting that he’s here for one last time tonight, right before Jaskier has to give up, so to speak, and, _h_ _uh_ , he thinks, staring at Geralt with his mouth slightly open for longer than he’d care to admit, has –

– has Geralt been checking up on him ever since he’s left town? It almost seems like it, with him being all like “faerie courts never move”, helping Jaskier pack and sending him on his merry way, and then taking contracts following Jaskier’s trail from city to city.

“Have you been _home_ in the past three weeks?”, he blurts out before he can stop himself.

Geralt hums. “I’ve been checking in on Ciri, yes”, he says, expression still guarded, but a tiny smile softening his gaze.

The excitement of seeing him here withers like a flower in a time-lapse movie at that, and uneasiness creeps up on Jaskier. He thinks of clumsy drawings on the fridge and funny remixes on his computer and teaching Ciri the four-strand braids he learned from his grandmother, and his heart clenches and flutters into motion again. “Geralt”, he says tensely, gripping his glass, “do you think I put a target on her back as well?”

“No”, Geralt replies in a low, insistent tone. “As you said, they don’t come into your apartment. They don’t know you’re friends.”

Jaskier lets out a breath. “Okay”, he says, relieved laughter mingling with his voice, “okay, good, that’s good, because I was ready to –”

“Take it up with the whole court?”, Geralt finishes for him, the hint of a smile tugging on his lips again. “I can see how that would work out well for you.”

Jaskier laughs more, this time genuinely, and at the bright noise of it Geralt’s face closes up again. It’s as if he’s been startled out of something – he furrows his brow, glaring into the empty space next to Jaskier’s head and waiting for the right words to come to him, frustrated when they don’t.

“Hey”, Jaskier says and steps a bit closer to him, “What’s on your mind?”

Geralt frowns at him. “The crowd”, he says, “they seemed _enthralled_ by your performance.”

“They did, didn’t they?”, Jaskier beams, unashamed to admit that he’s always been proud of this particular ability. “It’s been truly too long since I last played live, I had almost forgotten I could do this, ah, the way they just –”, he waves his glass for emphasis, “couldn’t take their eyes off me, right?” For a few seconds, he basks in the fresh memories and then watches them turn bittersweet at the thought that this will probably be the last evening like this for a while.

“No”, Geralt says, somewhat insistently. “It felt like magic was in the air.”

Jaskier huffs another little laugh at the compliment, but quiets when he sees that Geralt is still frowning. “What are you on about?”, he prods softly, and when Geralt doesn’t respond he adds: “Are you worried that I’m attracting too much attention here as well?”

Once again, he waits for Geralt to reply or confirm, but when he stays silent, he tries for a reassuring tone instead. “You told me yourself, faerie courts are bound to one locality and we’re a good one hundred kilometers away from home, _plus_ , I haven’t seen a single little fucker around here ever since I arrived this afternoon. Also, I’m not defenseless”, he chats, wiggling his fingers in front of Geralt’s face. “Look at these little gems?”

That seems to do the trick to snap Geralt out of whatever it is he’s worried about. “That iron?”, he asks as he tilts his head to inspect the rings on Jaskier’s hand. Jaskier holds still and nods, and Geralt’s shoulders relax. It’s only then that Jaskier realizes how much tension he’s been carrying around ever since he walked up to him, and it’s confusing and thrilling at the same time because he _sees_ Geralt drop his guard, easing into the space they occupy in the corner of the room. It’s as if their breaths suddenly mingle, as if they’re standing a step closer even though neither of them has moved.

Geralt’s hand comes up halfway, maybe unconsciously reaching out to touch, and Jaskier lightly rests his hand on top of his, barely making contact, so light that Geralt can withdraw at any time.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he brings his other hand up to brush lightly over the rings on Jaskier’s thumb, index finger, and ring finger, one after another. Jaskier’s breath hitches in his throat.

“Uh-huh”, he says, not trusting his voice on the first syllables. “As a repellent, and for punching. If necessary.”

Geralt tilts his head and endows him with another one of his small, fond smiles. He’s still holding Jaskier’s hand, barely touching, resting his fingers on the rings. “What are you planning to punch?”, he asks in an amused, or maybe charmed, tone, and Jaskier’s heart races. “Thin air? Surely you must know that humans –”

“– can’t touch fair folk, yes, say no more, separation of faerie realm and our dull mortal plane and all that jazz, they’re not really here, physically speaking, although they can very much bite our ankles, et cetera, et cetera.” He roughly outlines the entirety of what his grandmother taught him over the years with a wave of his other hand, not daring to move the one Geralt holds. “Actually, I’ve always wondered – how do we even know about that? Who in their right minds would try to touch one of those fuckers? How’s it work for a witcher, by the way?”

“Same as for monsters”, Geralt grumbles.

“Well, in that case, you can take care of the punching.”

Very carefully – almost comically slowly – Geralt lowers their hands, and instinctively, almost comically fast, Jaskier chases his hand as he lets go, catching Geralt’s fingertips with his own. His heart is beating in his throat, thrumming so loud that it seems deafening even over the noise of the bar, but Geralt doesn’t move, looks at their fingertips, still barely touching, and then curls his fingers to entangle them more.

There’s a small surge of courage at that, and before he can stop himself, Jaskier asks, “Have you been checking up on me?”

Geralt looks up at him, and Jaskier feels as if his hands are shaking when their eyes meet. _Fuck_ , he thinks faintly, he’s really in way too deep, much too nervous, much too desperate to hear Geralt say –

“Yes. I had to see what kind of trouble you’d get yourself into next.”

Geralt smiles again, and this time, the warmth fully reaches his eyes, crow’s feet crinkling, and they’re still holding hands – or not really, maybe this doesn’t count as holding hands, and Jaskier’s fingertips are probably terribly sweaty, but suddenly, just like that, the nervousness is gone. They’ve crossed a barrier just to find familiar ground on the other side, and Jaskier exhales a relieved laugh. “Oh, _good_ ”, he says, and then laughs some more, “because it would have been embarrassing for me if it had really been a series of fortunate coincidences.”

“I did kill a kikimora earlier”, Geralt amends.

“That really – that doesn’t exactly make it worse”, Jaskier says with a small wink that might have been too much. At least, their hands trail off, unclear who let go first, and they both take a sip from their drinks. There’s a beat of silence, after that, and it becomes unbearable to Jaskier almost immediately. “How long –”, he asks, trying for a cheerful tone, “– have you been here? Because if I remember correctly, you said the last time that you couldn’t give your opinion on my performance as you had missed the first half, so I’m –”

“I saw the whole set”, Geralt says. He looks inexplicably grumpy again, and Jaskier briefly wonders if hearing him perform revived his memory of how stupid he was for writing these songs in the first place.

“And?”, he prods, nonetheless. “Come on, Geralt, you must have some review this time!”

“You have a nice voice”, Geralt tells his beer. Then, after a pause: “The song about the supermarket faerie is still inaccurate. It’s not how true names work. And you messed up the middle part.”

Jaskier sputters. “You, _sir_ ”, he punctuates it by shoving his index finger into Geralt’s chest, which is somehow so solid that it slightly hurts, “are a _menace_ and I would ban you from ever giving your opinion on my artistry again if I wasn’t sure that I’d be playing right into your hands with that!”

“Hm”, Geralt says, and looks at Jaskier, and it makes Jaskier’s brain short-circuit a little bit. With the additional step he made to jab him, he’s standing much closer to Geralt now, his finger still in the air, and before his limbs get the notice to move, Geralt lifts his hand with a curious smile, lightly brushing his fingertips against Jaskier’s again.

Jaskier’s brain short-circuits _a lot_. For a moment, his entire being is focused on that touch of skin, and he feels like his face is burning up, like his legs are trembling, blood rushing in his ears. It’s a rush, and it’s glorious, and he faintly wonders if Geralt, with his enhanced senses, knows how much he’s shaken by this oh-so-mundane gesture, except that it’s not mundane at all – it’s the first time Geralt has touched him deliberately, he’s sure of that, and there’s no excuse this time, no subpar pizza menus and no iron rings, Geralt really just – and that’s –

If that means something, he thinks faintly, that just made leaving so much more difficult.

Almost as if on cue Geralt asks, “Have you figured out what to do next?”, lowly, nearly mumbling.

Jaskier strokes his fingertips ever-so-lightly over the back of Geralt’s hand, nervousness clenching around his stomach again with a leaden weight. “Well”, he says, trailing off, unsure what to say when they both know he can only continue traveling for so long. After all, in the end, “you’re not safe here” comes down to him moving to a different city never to return: The fair folk don’t forget, and if he came back as an old man sixty years from now, they might still try to whisk him away into their hill to play his merry songs for them. Leaving behind his and Yen’s and Triss’s apartment is what makes it so much harder than any other move in his life – the prospect of falling out of touch with everyone, of being alone, and that of Geralt forgetting him eventually.

He’s really stupid sometimes, isn’t he? Not admitting defeat when he’s clearly beaten, drawing out this in-between space and telling himself every time to just do one more town, subconsciously waiting for Geralt to show up just because he doesn’t want to pop this temporary soap bubble they’ve found themselves in. And the thing is, it’s thinning at the edges already, and he’s going to regret it if he just lets it burst.

Fuck it, Jaskier thinks.

“Let’s talk about your plans instead”, he says, trying for a slightly different voice. “Sleeping in your car every night can’t be all that comfortable, right?”

Geralt, caught off guard, ducks his head and laughs, and it’s not the reaction Jaskier was going for, but it’s fantastic.

* * *

In the deafening quietness of the second floor hallway with its narrow walls and the overly soft, light brown carpet any conversation they might have had going gets quickly muffled along with the sound of their footsteps. Once they’ve made it to the hotel room, the only noise left is the irritating beeping as Jaskier tries to unsuccessfully enter his code on the keypad for the fourth time, and in contrast to any fantasy he may or may not have had about pretty much this exact scenario in the past five years, Geralt is far from crowding him against the door. Instead, he’s propped up against the wall again, legs crossed at his ankles and arms crossed in front of his chest, leaving space, but watching Jaskier intently.

As always, he is hard to read, but somehow even more so now that Jaskier is acting based on conclusions drawn from a single touch of hands alone. Downstairs, it seemed enormous, fragile, life-changing, but now he can’t help but wonder if he misread everything and Geralt is really just taking him up on his offer to share a room.

It’s a relief when the door finally unlocks with a sharp whir. “Well, here we are!”, Jaskier exhales, pushing it open with his hip. His voice is way too loud for the tiny room that he steps into, but still, he can’t help but let a stream of words flow from his mouth to fill the silence. “Like I said, it’s tiny, but it’s clean, or at least it looks like it, although we shouldn’t inspect the carpet too closely because I did notice some strange stains when I checked in earlier. Oh, and we’re not supposed to drink the tap water – rusty pipes.” He kicks off his shoes at the wardrobe and takes two more steps to make space for Geralt as well. The room instantly feels crowded, and Jaskier’s eyes zero in on the singular, queen-sized bed that looks so much smaller than it did in his memory.

Geralt looks up from where he’s struggling with his bootlaces. “Mind if I’m first for the shower?”, he asks. “I want to wash off the rest of the kikimora blood.”

“Sure”, Jaskier says. He fidgets, and then turns to uselessly smoothing the fabric of his jeans instead, but Geralt clearly thinks everything important has been discussed. Standing in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, Jaskier watches him carefully lean his swords against the wall, shrug off his leather jacket, and vanish into the bathroom, locking the door behind him.

That leaves Jaskier to silence once again – and to a dimly lit room with yellow wallpaper, a printed photograph of a train, and a bulky old TV to amplify it. He sits down at the edge of the bed, no idea what to do with his hands and with the time, and stands up again almost immediately, walking back and forth along the end of the bed. After a few minutes, the sound of running water starts as Geralt gets into the shower. There’s a muffled curse at that, too, which almost sounds as if he was startled by the cold, and in the midst of his pacing, a tiny smile sneaks up on Jaskier.

He sits down again, a bit calmer, this time leaning up against the headboard. With his legs outstretched, he can’t help but note that he’s definitely taking up half of the space, no way they can stay out of each other’s way while sleeping. If Geralt comes out of the bathroom and just turns off the light to go to sleep, expecting Jaskier to somehow find peace and quiet while he’ll be so close that he’ll probably, like, feel his body heat or smell his shampoo –

– let’s just say it’s a pity Jaskier never took the time to draw up a will because he is surely going to die an excruciating, pitiful death.

For just a moment, he almost considers taking off his pants and binder, pulling the blanket over his head and pretending to be asleep by the time Geralt comes out, but he can’t bring himself to do that, either, not when there’s still –

– the breath of possibility. The chance to show Geralt what he means to him.

When Geralt comes out of the bathroom a good fifteen minutes later, clad only in boxer briefs and a black, long-sleeved undershirt, Jaskier is aimlessly scrolling through his Twitter mentions, and he makes an inhumane effort to continue doing so even if he has to glue his eyeballs to the screen. Unfazed by Jaskier’s struggles, Geralt drops down onto the mattress next to him, stretches his legs with a groan and comes to rest against the headboard slightly below Jaskier. Trying to look at his phone when Geralt’s naked legs are almost touching his own is a lost cause, and Jaskier throws his phone on the nightstand, staring straight ahead at the wall instead.

The headlights of the train on the neon-colored photograph give off the strange impression that it’s looking right back at him. Further down below, Jaskier notices that his right big toe is poking a little bit through his worn, rainbow-striped sock.

“That’s a really ugly train”, Jaskier says, just to say something.

“Hm”, Geralt agrees.

Neither of them move, and the threat of continuing silence feels so urgent after a few seconds that Jaskier shuffles his feet and turns his head to Geralt and blurts out, “How old are you?”

Geralt huffs a small breath that sounds like relief. “Old enough to have a sleepover”, he says with a smirk. He turns his head as well, still leaning against the headboard, and when their eyes meet, Jaskier feels like a weight has been lifted from him.

“No, seriously”, he says, quickly pressing on, “I genuinely have no idea how old you are. I’m guessing you’re neither 30 nor 40, so what is it? 80? 200? 32875?”

“I’m older than I look”, Geralt grumbles, and Jaskier laughs.

“Are you immortal?”

“That’s a pretty personal question.”

“So, are you?”

“Are we playing ten questions?”, Geralt ask deadpan, but surprisingly well-versed in the art of sleepovers, indeed. “Or did I inadvertently agree to host an AMA in this hotel room?”

Somehow, that’s enough to break through any residual nervousness. “Ohh”, Jaskier hums, pulling up his knees to sit cross-legged, looking down at Geralt, “ _Fu_ _n_ , I think we’re doing a guessing game instead. So you _do_ know what the internet is. The question is just, does that make you younger than I thought? Or did Triss teach you?”

Geralt shuffles a bit. He clasps his hands behind his head and surprisingly, the motion doesn’t cause his undershirt to rip, even if it almost succeeds at making Jaskier lose his train of thought.

“What do you _do_ on the internet?”, he asks after a second of gathering his bearings, still curious. “Seeing how you’re not looking for contracts. Come on, challenge to share one personal fact with me. Do you watch Star Trek on Netflix? Host a gardening Discord? I’m at a total loss, Geralt, do you have a favorite vine?”

“I do”, Geralt says, seriously. “There’s one where a horse zips up a man’s jacket.”

Jaskier blinks. “And – then?”, he asks.

“That’s it.”

There’s a pause.

“I really like horses”, Geralt ventures.

“And there’s my personal fact”, Jaskier says with a content smile that’s probably way too charmed. He rubs his fingertips together absentmindedly and stares back at Geralt, trying to figure out what to do with all of this, the fondness, and his own rapidly beating heart, and the certainty of having to leave behind whatever it is that they have – friendship, maybe, enough for Geralt to trust him with Ciri, conversations at a kitchen table past midnight, Jaskier filling otherwise companionable silence with chatter, flirty remarks that never went anywhere.

He sighs, and lets loose once again.

“I’m running out of money”, he says. “I can’t keep up the traveling for much longer. You wanted to know what I’ll do next and I guess, I mean – I haven’t had a better idea than to go back north for a while. Maybe I’ll try with my old job again, who knows. At least I still know some people up there.”

I will miss you, hangs on the tip of his tongue, and, absurdly, foolishly: come with me, but it seems too much, too big for the small hotel room.

Geralt hums. “I can drive you there”, he says, and keeps looking at him. It’s almost as if he’s searching for words as well, and Jaskier is hit by the sudden realization that he wants _something_ at least, that he’ll regret it forever if he leaves without taking a leap of faith now.

His heart is loud in his ears again, drumming out second after excruciatingly long second. Then, almost too fast, almost like he’s falling off a cliff and desperately grasping for a hold, Jaskier reaches out for Geralt’s hand. He grips it too tightly, and he doesn’t say anything, almost doesn’t dare to breathe. There’s a beat, silence, Geralt’s hand underneath Jaskier’s, and then –

Geralt lets out an audible exhale, turning his hand over to hold Jaskier’s properly, their fingers intertwining. For a long moment they just stare at each other. Then, without letting go, _he sure as hell isn’t letting go_ , Jaskier gets on his knees and shuffles towards him, unexpectedly out of his depth until Geralt places his other hand on his hip and guides him closer. The touch is so gentle that it feels like affection, and Jaskier stares at Geralt with wide eyes, thinking that it can’t mean nothing, not with Geralt looking at him as if –

A whole different kind of nervousness fluttering in his chest – the good kind, the exciting kind – Jaskier grins down at him. “Can I?”, he asks, and it seems to come out way too loud, but Geralt nods, and Jaskier leans in, and then he’s kissing him.

For a moment, there’s only that – the kiss, and their joined hands between them, and it’s almost as if they don’t dare to move. But Geralt is parting his lips and tipping his head back, leaning into Jaskier’s touch – and his lips are surprisingly soft, and he kisses Jaskier back so gently that it makes something in him ache. There’s something greedy in him, too, that awakens at that, asking for more, deeming _something_ not quite enough anymore, and Jaskier gives in to that instead to drown out the overwhelming longing, letting go of Geralt’s hand and climbing into his lap properly to kiss him harder. He tangles his hands in Geralt’s soft hair to keep him closer, and Geralt lets out a barely audible whine, trailing after Jaskier when he pulls back, his eyes closed, a soft smile on his lips.

“Jaskier”, he mumbles, pressing small kisses against his neck, and Jaskier lets his eyes flutter shut as well to bask in the sensation. His hands keep carding through Geralt’s hair, winding it around his fingers, then smoothing it out again, and Geralt wraps his arms around his waist almost possessively, feeding into Jaskier’s greediness. Hearing him say his name like that is heart-wrenching and intoxicating at the same time, and Jaskier doesn’t know how to deal with it, how he’ll _cope_ when he’ll have to go through his daily life with this engraved in his memory, so he kisses him some more, pressing himself up against Geralt and finding him half-hard against him. Geralt’s fingertips trace his bare skin in the small of his back beneath his shirt and he shudders, thinking he can feel calluses from years or decades of sword fighting brushing against his love handles. His mind struggles to keep up with the overwhelming sensations of this moment, a cut-off moan escaping his lips as Geralt’s thumb traces a line across his belly.

He draws back, faintly noticing he’s breathing heavily already, and gasps, “Mind if I take my shirt off?” When Geralt shakes his head, enthusiastically so, Jaskier quickly discards his rings on the nightstand and shrugs it off, taking care not to rip the fabric despite his own impatience. He throws it in the vague direction of the wardrobe without looking and then pulls his undershirt over his head, leaving only the binder on.

Their eyes meet again and, _fuck_ , “You’re so beautiful”, Jaskier says before he can help himself, trailing his thumb across Geralt’s cheekbone. Geralt leans into the touch, and Jaskier’s hand is steady, but he feels deeply shaken by the motion, as if his whole body is trembling. He kisses Geralt again, maybe to keep him from saying something in reply, maybe to tell him he means it. That ache in his chest keeps expanding and his ribs are unable to hold it in, so it escapes through his throat, manifesting in small moans. He pulls back just long enough to say, “Touch me”, too loudly again, maybe, and to take Geralt’s hands in his when he hesitates, placing them on his upper body.

Carefully, Geralt traces his thumbs over his ribs, along the seam of his binder, breaking the kiss to pay attention to Jaskier’s neck again. He’s so gentle, still, and Jaskier somehow feels shattered by it, but then Geralt’s breath ghosts against the sensitive spot behind his ear and he loses this particular train of thought. Instead, he grinds down against Geralt, letting out a deep groan at the friction, and that makes Geralt moan as well and bite a bit harder. The combined sensation is enough for Jaskier to let that something inside him take over again, drowning in _not enough_ and _more_. He pulls Geralt even closer, clawing at his shirt, giving in to deep rolls of his hips and rocking himself against the outline of his cock, the friction of his jeans delicious and frustrating at the same time. As he tangles his fingers in Geralt’s hair again, gently pulling his head back to look at him, Geralt whines lowly, and he’s so goddamn beautiful in the low light of hotel room, his eyes almost golden, freckles dusting his nose, lost in pleasure.

“Can I?”, Jaskier whispers, trailing his fingers over the waistband of his briefs. Geralt nods, and he pushes it down just enough to pull his cock free. As he wraps a hand around it and begins to move, he watches Geralt intently, wanting to take care of him and to coax out more of the noises he’s been making, but it doesn’t seem like there’s the need for finesse just now: His forehead dropping heavily against the crook of Jaskier’s neck, Geralt groans at the firm pulls just as much as at the light ones, and when Jaskier lightly trails his fingertips over the underside of his cock, he shudders.

“Jaskier”, he strains when Jaskier begins to stroke him faster. He’s looking up at him like he’s drowning and clinging to him to stay afloat, his hair a mess from where he has raked through it, and Jaskier can’t help but press light kisses to his forehead, his cheekbones, his eyelids. “Jaskier”, Geralt repeats, “What do you – how do you want –”, and then he breaks off at a twist of Jaskier’s wrist again.

Jaskier laughs in delight, breathily, and whispers, “like this”, repositioning his legs and grinding down in earnest against Geralt’s left thigh, matching his movements with the one of his hands. “Fuck”, Geralt says, _“Jaskier”_ , and he reaches up to cup his face between his hands. With their foreheads resting against each other, eyes falling shut, it seems like there’s nothing left outside the small space between them, filled with mingled breaths. It doesn’t take long after that for Geralt to come with a deep moan, thrusting up and spilling over his hands, and, heat pooling between Jaskier’s thighs at the sight of it, he ruts against Geralt with single-minded intent. His eyes pressed shut, chasing the pleasure, he, too, is coming within a few moments, Geralt’s hands guiding him to ride it out.

Then, he collapses into Geralt, and Geralt wraps his arms around him.

They stay like that for a long while. Jaskier listens as their breaths even out and synchronize, unable to form a coherent thought, marveling at the feeling of being held.

When he finally comes down, the first thing his eyes focus on is the white stains standing out against the dark fabric of Geralt’s undershirt. Before he can stop himself, Jaskier is wheezing into Geralt’s shoulder at the mental image of him having to take on his next contract looking like this.

“I have spare clothes in my car”, Geralt mutters into Jaskier’s hair, his voice slightly more hoarse than usual. Jaskier pulls back to look at him, but lingers, unwilling to give up on the contact yet. “Of course you do”, he says, unabashed of how ridiculously charmed he sounds for the moment.

There’s a beat, and then –

“Jaskier”, Geralt says once again. All of a sudden, he sounds serious, and the contrast in his tone is a rush of cold water to the head. Jaskier doesn’t want to hear it. He pulls away and gets up on shaky legs. Looking for something to do with his hands, he picks up his shirt from the ground: Huh, his aim at the wardrobe was far off indeed.

“I’ll take my shower now”, he says without turning around.

When he slips out of the bathroom again ten minutes later, Geralt has already turned off the lights in a strange subversion of what Jaskier was imagining earlier. His stained shirt has been thrown over the footboard carelessly. Jaskier climbs into bed, impossibly trying to keep his distance as he crawls under his side of the blanket, and then lies on his back, not daring to move.

Geralt makes a low noise in his throat, and then asks, quietly: “Did you come onto me because you think we won’t see each other again?”

Jaskier stares at the ceiling for so long that Geralt probably thinks he’s asleep already. “Yeah”, he finally says, rolling onto his side.

Geralt stays silent, and Jaskier falls asleep listening to his breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With severe disappointment, I have to tell you that the vine Geralt mentions is not real. :(  
> I, uh, hope you liked that one. The fourth chapter will be up on Saturday.


	4. homecoming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this story exactly two months ago, so...happy anniversary? I distinctly remember looking at my initial notes and thinking, "oh no, this is gonna have _plot_ ".  
> (jump to the end notes to see the mild content warnings for this chapter)

A nasty headache is thrumming behind Jaskier’s temples again. He tries to focus – his grandmother is smiling at him from the opposite side of the kitchen table in her tiny apartment. Or maybe they’re on the patio again instead, with the carpet beater and radio and the smell of laburnum. Or was it jasmine? He’s rapidly losing his grasp on the scene: His grandmother’s face blurs in and out of focus until he’s not sure it’s her anymore, her hands busy brushing the cat’s fur, or maybe brushing lines in a sketchbook. Desperately wanting to hold on to the moment, to the feeling of being protected, Jaskier tosses his head to the side and that’s what wakes him up.

He’s in Geralt’s car again. That’s the first thing that registers with him, and it explains the headache. For several long seconds, he doesn’t move. Resting heavily against the headrest, he stares at the small, graveled parking lot he can make out through the windshield with half-closed lids until more details start seeping in. He’s alone, he realizes, still buckled up in the passenger seat as if they’ve stopped here recently, and it’s dark outside. When he feels slightly more alert, he sits up properly, his head protesting the motion with a surge of pain, and wipes the steamy side window with the sleeve of his jacket. All he can see as he peers outside is is a dark building, a country road, and fields stretching beyond it. He keeps staring for longer than necessary, a vague discomfort stirring in his stomach, and only notices Geralt walking up to the car when he’s almost at the door.

“You’re awake.”

Geralt lets in a welcome stream of cool air as he pulls inside and squeezes his legs behind the steering wheel with some effort. “What is it –”, Jaskier yawns, without turning around, his voice still husky from sleep, “– that you hide in this godforsaken car? Because, let me tell you, these headaches are beginning to wear me down. Come on, Geralt, don’t hold back, I’m not gonna judge you for whatever weird witchery thing it is.”

Geralt doesn’t answer. When Jaskier rolls his head over, finally tearing himself away from the window, he finds him staring again. It’s a scrutinizing gaze, just like the one he sported when he saw him at the bar the other night, and Jaskier feels a twinge of nervousness and slight irritation at the same time. He wets his lips, looking right back at Geralt, hesitating. For a moment, he almost feeling like calling out Geralt on his changing moods and brooding stares, but then he thinks about the hotel room again, about falling asleep next to Geralt and Geralt asking him why he made his move now, almost as if he hadn’t noticed Jaskier flirting with him before. And the thing is, with one day spent in broad daylight and long silences in a car in between, Jaskier has the creeping suspicion that it maybe all came across wrong and Geralt thinks it was a just spur-of-the-moment thing, and he has no idea how to set this right.

Something changes in Geralt’s eyes, and then he looks away. “It’s nine in the evening”, he mutters. “Thought we could stop here for the night. It’s a small town, but it has a hotel.”

Jaskier clings to his attempt at conversation like it’s a lifeline. “What town?”, he asks, much more animated than he feels, as if it somehow actually matters which one of the almost identical shithole small towns littered throughout this region it is they’ve landed in.

Unless it’s –

Geralt shrugs. “Missed the sign. There’s main road and a stream. Some horses. A bus stop.”

Jaskier unbuckles his seat belt to go have a look. He’s not sure why he does it in the first place – maybe it’s just the desire to get some fresh air, or maybe the image invoked by Geralt’s words makes him uneasy enough to check. As soon as he stands outside, though, one hand still on the car door, he knows. He doesn’t need to get closer to the hotel to see it’s the same fucking place that held all their family reunions, doesn’t even need to look at the street or the facades of the houses on the other side of it. Instead, it’s the crunch of gravel under his shoes that gives it away, somehow, and the gurgling of the stream, and the faint clatter drifting across the parking lot from the restaurant, and the wind loaded with the smell of forsythia and manure and _earth_ and exhaust fumes and burnt roast potatoes from the kitchen.

He fights back a hysterical laugh. Some choked noise comes out nonetheless. “Fucking hell, Jask”, he mumbles, rubbing his fingertips against each other, “what the actual fuck.”

“Jaskier?”, Geralt prompts through the open door.

“Yeah”, he says, his voice quavering just a little before he can steady it. “Hate to break the bad news to you this time, Geralt, but I think there’s a lot of little fuckers in this town.”

With a single swift motion, Geralt exits the car. He lets his eyes dart around the perimeter and he must see more than Jaskier in the dark because he steps a bit closer to him and hums unhappily. “Do you think they’re out for trouble?”

Jaskier bites his lower lip. “So, uh, funny story”, he says, and huffs a laugh, and presses the tips of his fingernails into his thumb, one after another, “while I was sleeping, and you were picking the route at random, presumably, seeing how you don’t have a phone, I mean, you, uh. You drove us to my hometown. What a coincidence, huh?”

“Fuck”, Geralt says. Jaskier can feel him looking, but he stares straight ahead, focusing on his own fidgeting instead. After a few seconds, Geralt very slowly, almost as if he’s afraid Jaskier will bolt, places his hand on his elbow. It’s only there for a moment, but Jaskier feels its weight even after it’s gone. “Reckon we should leave?”, Geralt asks.

Jaskier hesitates. They probably should, he thinks, but he doesn’t feel like letting himself be chased away so easily. He’s tired, and, well, not exactly _thrilled_ to be here, but it’s been years since he last set foot in this town, and there’s relief tied to this thought, too, relief of not being scared of it anymore. Not really, anyway.

“I can handle it”, he says, and means it.

Geralt gives him a strange look, but seems to take his word for it. Still, he gets his steel sword from the backseat before locking the car and shoves it in a large blue IKEA bag that he swings over his shoulder. He looks incredibly charming like that, hair tied up in a loose bun to keep it out of his face and clad in the black yoga pants and soft tunic he always puts on for long drives. Jaskier could compose a song about him on the spot, and pondering possible rhymes for the word “Frakta” is distracting enough that he’s actually surprised by the sight they’re greeted with the second they step into the warmth and light of the restaurant.

It’s not as if he had forgotten about it, he thinks with a tinge of bitterness as they stop closely behind the door, both of them inconspicuously letting their eyes wander across the dining area. But ever since leaving this town he has never been anywhere that came even close to how abundant faeries were here, how much time they spent in the mortal realm as opposed to their court, and how brashly they mingled with humans’ everyday life. There’s at least seven or eight of them that he instantly spots now: A small fox-legged and pointy-eared creature in a red cloak is untying shoelaces under the table, and there’s a woman in the corner, half-covered in moss, seemingly lost in her task of knitting greenbrier vines together. Several horned and antlered figures dart around, stealing food and drinks from trays and tables with too-long fingers and too-sharp teeth. They dance across the crowded room with ease and self-assurance, not bothered in the slightest when a human stares in their direction for a few seconds too long, wondering in vain if they saw something move.

Maybe here to watch over their shenanigans, a vaguely woman-shaped faerie knight is seated at the bar, her dark red armor covered in thorns and thistles and wine dripping from her chin. She looks startlingly out of place sitting in between a middle-aged man with an outdoor jacket and a beer and a teenager scribbling in a sketchbook on her other side, neither of them taking note of her at all. Her aura of regality, just as much as the spiked mace resting on the floor next to her stool, give off definite “don’t fuck with me” vibes, and Jaskier feels it in his bones that it would be even worse than usual to catch her attention specifically, as intriguing as she might look.

With effort, he tears his gaze away from her, letting the loud noise and chatter of the restaurant fade in. A waitress waves at him and Geralt from the kitchen door on the other side of the room, and when she walks up to them a few moments later, something about the swing in her step and the way she wipes her hands on her apron stirs distant memories of family gatherings and birthdays. She seems to be in her late fifties, so it’s completely possible that she already worked here the last time he attended one of those, Jaskier thinks. Suddenly, the weirdness of being back here, at thirty-one, with Geralt and his sword in a bag, on the run from a whole different faerie court, almost feels like a physical sensation. It’s as if there’s a ripple in time, and he’s standing here twice in the same spot, once as he is now and once as he was before he left town, before he started writing music, before he found friends, and for a split second, he feels closer to this past version of himself than he has in a long time.

“Good evening! Table for two?”

“Jaskier?”

He feels Geralt looking at him, waiting for him to make the decision on whether to stay or to go in the light of the faerie onslaught they’re facing, but he lingers. For just a moment, he can’t help but let his gaze wander over the tables instead. With irritation, he notices that his heart starts beating a bit faster when he seems to spot a few faces from his school, shifting high chairs and children’s portions. Some of them are looking in their direction, assessing the newcomers, and he feels strange, like he doesn’t know how to fit his existence into this room with its walls that seem narrower all of a sudden, suffocating.

“Jaskier?”, Geralt repeats. He sounds a bit worried this time. Still unsure how to reply, Jaskier tears his gaze away from the crowd, only to hear Geralt mutter another heartfelt “fuck” and see him spin around to stand in front of Jaskier, shielding him. For a second, Jaskier thinks things have gone awry already without him noticing, but then he sees the teenager from the bar defiantly peer around Geralt’s broad form to take a look at him, their sketchbook still clutched in their hands.

His heart sinks with a sense of foreboding.

“Um, sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt, but he just said ‘Jaskier’, right? And, um, you do look like him, so, um, I’m just kinda assuming it’s you, so, eh, hi –”

They’re less than half his age, no chance of knowing he grew up here, colorful hair and glasses and all genuine excitement and nerve-wrecking awkwardness. There’s a tiny enamel non-binary pride flag pinned to their collar, and something in Jaskier’s heart cracks.

“Um, I’ve been listening to your album for the past two week and it’s amazing, the music is genuinely great and I just think you have, um, a great voice, but also, like, this super rich imagination that makes the songs so fun to listen to, and –”

Faintly, Jaskier remembers to put on a friendly face, even if his supposedly rich imagination is almost causing him to erupt in hysterical laughter, surreal as it is with a faerie knight in spiky armor seated right behind them and several shadowy beings circling closer as they speak, taking turns to peak over their shoulders to get a good look at Jaskier. On top of everything else, the conversation around them dies down as several patrons turn around to look in their direction, and for once in his life, the attention is making him itch and shuffle.

“– um, I was just wondering, do you have your lute with you? You could play something here, that would seriously be so cool, I mean, you don’t have to, of course, but, if you wanted to?”

Half the room is watching them by now, intrigued by the scene they’re making. It’s nothing like being on stage, and Jaskier feels their eyes burning through him, feels like yelling at them to stop staring at the same time. He just wanted some fucking food, he thinks, angry at himself for feeling affected when at the same time, the antlered figures around them already circle closer, intrigued by all the talk about music and beautiful voices and lute playing, and all he can do is wait, because it’s just a matter of time until it happens with them attracting so much attention –

The moment draws out, sounds reaching his brain as if he’s hearing them through a pipe. Then, with a painful breath, he crashes back into it. “I’m afraid I don’t have it with me right now”, he says in an apologetic tone. “I’m – sorry, really am, but maybe we should leave.”

“You’re from around here?”, the waitress asks. She’s still standing there, as if nothing has happened, smiling at the teenager and at Jaskier’s own puzzled expression. “Something in your accent – it sounds local –”

– And that’s what it takes to finally make the knitting woman and the knight sharply turn their heads towards him in a collective motion, zeroing in on him as if they’re following a choreography. For a moment, everything stops. Jaskier feels plastered to the spot, and even as he tries not to do it, he can’t keep his eyes from raising to make direct eye contact with the knight. She smirks at him knowingly.

– And it’s too much, the crowd still staring and the waitress who probably knows him smiling and his small fan looking at him in bewilderment, and he should say something before he leaves, but he doesn’t know what to reply, how to apologize, so he just turns on his heel, rushing blindly towards the door to flee.

The cold evening air outside is once again a welcome change, sobering almost, and Jaskier stops for a moment to take a breath. “Great”, he says, unable to keep a self-deprecating tone from seeping into his voice, “that went well.”

“The menu was shit, anyway”, Geralt says next to him, and Jaskier laughs.

They make it halfway towards the car before something skitters to a halt a few steps behind them.

For several seconds, neither of them move, not daring to turn around just yet, waiting for the movement to repeat. Geralt’s car is so close and so far away at the same time, and Jaskier shoots it a wistful glance, thinking that all he really wants right now is to leave this place and go to sleep, preferably for a few days, and not deal with whatever faerie nonsense has taken the chance to jump on him now.

“Geralt”, he says, resolutely staring straight ahead, and his voice comes out just a little bit strangled, “I’ve come to the conclusion that the lute might not be worth it after all.”

“I’m glad you finally realized”, Geralt grunts. Then, at the sound of something heavy being dropped on the ground behind them, sending pebbles flying, he whirls around. As he pulls his sword out of the IKEA bag and assumes a defensive stance, Jaskier’s heart can’t help but swell at his bravery. It takes all of his willpower not to turn around as well, to leave his own back open and unprotected, but for all he knows, they’ve come for him, which would make direct eye contact the worst thing he could do.

Instead, he closes his eyes for just a second, trying to brace himself for what’s to come, but there’s no reprieve. He hears them move behind him once again, their light steps followed by the sound of a heavy object being dragged through the gravel, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach, Jaskier realizes he won’t have to wait for her to circle them in order to know who followed them outside.

As she steps into his peripheral vision, pulling her maze behind her, the knight merely looks like a rough sketch of something human anymore, albeit still beautiful – all broad and sharp angles, her skin glowing faintly greenish. She laughs, and it sounds closer to the rustling of leaves in the wind or the murmur of the stream than to a human voice, and Jaskier holds still, avoiding her gaze, waiting for her to begin her little game. Geralt has turned around alongside with her, still pointing his steel sword in her direction, and she gives it a wary look before cocking her head at Jaskier, smiling.

“Congratulations”, she says.

It’s so wrong, so painfully out of character, that Jaskier feels his mouth drop open. “What?”, he says loudly, his voice jumping an octave, and as he turns to Geralt, he sees him frown, looking just as confused as himself.

“Tell me, how did you manage to do it?”, the knight asks, unfazed by his display of surprise and curious, almost playful. “I really must know, it’s quite fashionable indeed.”

Jaskier stares at her, still so taken aback that words elude him once more. At the same time, though, anger begins to simmer lowly in his chest, replacing the confusion. It’s always like this, isn’t it, he thinks, they always have to play with their prey first, incapable to simply announce what they’re on about, and now they’re bringing someone else into it and he’s sick of it, sick of over thirty years of having to stand by, waiting passively until they lose interest. He feels it surging to his head, making him almost dizzy, making him clench his fists harder and almost throw all caution to the wind. Still, he holds back, forces himself to wait.

The knight steps closer to him, flashing a smile with way too many teeth. “Tell me”, she whispers, “I will keep it to myself. How did you tame a witcher?”

The words seep into Jaskier’s brain as if the air is made of syrup and they’re sticking to it, refusing to register with him. For a moment, the anger feels less urgent as he’s caught up in how she’s speaking to him – not in riddles, not like she’s trying to propose a trade, but as if they know each other and she just wants to gain some knowledge from him to satisfy her curiosity. And there’s a sizzling sensation, an unbearable itch at the back of his brain, because he doesn’t understand –

– it would only make sense if he –

“Don’t worry”, she grins at him, strangely, unsettlingly picking up on his discomfort, “I can’t see through it, it’s safe and sound. Only recognized you in the first place because you’re from around here. Are you planning to take him to court tonight? I’m sure he’ll be all the rage, with his sword fighting and pretty looks – the Queen will surely be impressed if you make such a comeback.”

“Jask!”, Geralt says sharply, with enough presence of mind to not say his full name, and it cuts through his haze of staring at her blankly. Geralt is still gripping his steel sword, but has lowered it to the ground, and his expression is set in something gritty and determined. “Come on. Let’s leave.”

It’s enough to make the knight turn her attention from Jaskier towards him, and as she steps closer into Geralt’s direction, still mindful of his sword, she gives her maze a small swing in turn, just for show. “May I have his name?”, she asks, her voice filled with fascination. “I’d really like to tell him to behave.”

Something cold clenches around Jaskier’s insides, and without thinking, he steps into her space, causing her to stumble backwards. “You may not”, he says icily, but the knight just laughs. “I do need to see if I can manage it, too”, she whispers, and that’s when he feels the surge of magic emanating from her like a breeze, rustling and flickering towards Geralt, and Geralt –

– _stops_.

Leaden dread obstructing his throat, Jaskier steps closer to him, and Geralt doesn’t react, doesn’t move at all, just stands there with a blank face, staring at nothing. As the moment draws out far longer than it should be possible, Jaskier’s brain struggling to process what he’s seeing, he somehow can’t help but circle back to the sheer wrongness of seeing Geralt like that. He’s immune to most magic, after all, and he shouldn’t be helpless and incapacitated by a simple enchantment. Then, with its abrupt force almost taking him by surprise, the simmering anger comes back and boils over instantly, and the blood rushing in his ears thankfully drowns out everything else.

“What did you do to him?”, he sneers, baring his teeth at the knight.

“Made him behave”, she cackles, and –

– there’s no thought, no conscious decision that he makes. One moment he’s still holding back, clenching his fists so hard that his fingernails break the skin of his palms, and the next, he’s lunging at her, snarling as he hurls his body against hers. He doesn’t feel the impact on the ground that pushes the air from his lungs, doesn’t care about the thorns of her armor boring into his hands and forearms, breaking the skin; from one moment to the other he’s fully consumed by the fury coiling in his stomach. He claws mindlessly at his opponent, and as the iron rings on his fingers touch the skin of her face and he sees her expression contort in pain, the only thing he feels for a moment is grim, soothing satisfaction.

And then the realization settles in: He’s touching her.

He withdraws, staring down at her, his own labored breath unnaturally loud in his ears. It shouldn’t be possible – he should have stumbled through thin air by all means and yet, his hands are bleeding from the thorns, and her skin is sizzling where he clawed at her. His rage is gone within the blink of an eye, leaving only horror to grasp at his chest to replace it, and before he can start to think about what has happened, the knight is gone as well, leaving nothing behind but the faint smell of burnt skin.

Desperately trying to herd his racing thoughts into the back of his mind, Jaskier half-crawls, half-stumbles towards Geralt who is still standing as he was, his sword on the ground next to his feet where he dropped it. He remains completely, unnaturally motionless as he comes up to him, and Jaskier grabs his arms that are hanging slackly at his side, fighting the urge to shake him. “Geralt!”, he says frantically, turning around to dart his eyes around the parking lot to see if the knight is still there, watching, waiting to strike a bargain with him after all –

– but she’s gone, she’s really gone, he thinks, without reversing the spell. “Geralt”, he says again, or maybe he shouts it. His mind is racing, stumbling, trying to think up a way to get Geralt away from here while he’s like this, to bring him to safety while Jaskier walks straight into the court to drag the knight back up here to undo her magic, and, and, “Wake up, Geralt!”, he says, and –

– at this, Geralt moves, as if he’s flung back into time. He looks around wildly, taking in the scene, and then focuses his eyes on Jaskier who is still clawing at him. Relief rushes through Jaskier as if through a floodgate, almost escaping in a sob, and he clutches him tighter. “You’re back!”, he exhales, desperate laughter mixing in his voice, “oh _fuck_ , they had me for a moment here, not gonna lie, Geralt – are you okay?”

Geralt stares at him with wide eyes, as if he’s seeing him for the first time. His jaw is clenched, as if he’s trying to hold back words, or as if he can’t get them out properly.

“Where’s the knight?”, he finally asks, gently withdrawing from Jaskier’s bruisingly tight grip on his arms, but reaching out a second later again to steady him when he’s stumbling.

“Gone”, Jaskier says hoarsely, trying to concentrate on Geralt’s touch to keep himself focused, “are you okay, Geralt – are you _yourself_?”, and he can’t seem to tear his gaze away from his face, as if he might vanish if he blinks.

“I’m fine”, Geralt hums, and, when Jaskier keeps clinging to him, “I’m not under the influence of her magic anymore.” He smiles lightly and raises an eyebrow. “Or maybe that’s what I want you to think.”

Jaskier breathes a laugh that comes out more like a sob and weakly swats at him. “Glad to see you and your horrible humor are back”, he says, but he can’t seem to keep the concern out of his voice, and Geralt mumbles, “It’s really me, don’t worry. What happened?”

“I hurt her with my rings”, Jaskier says hesitantly, unwilling to think about it. Once he’s started speaking, though, the words keep tumbling out of his mouth. “I think I kinda – knocked her over, you know, and then when I touched her, her skin started burning off, and then she made a run for it, Geralt – I don’t understand why I could touch her and I’m freaking out a little bit here”, he blurts, and his voice tips over backwards. “Was she a special kind of fae? There’s gotta be something like this, right, surely?”

Geralt’s expression is blank. “How did you lift the spell?”, he asks lowly.

“I don’t know, I just – I told you to wake up, I guess”, Jaskier says, and he faintly registers that his hands are shaking. “Why is that important, Geralt – tell me what’s going on!”

He stares at Geralt with wide eyes, trying to focus on his face, on his eyes, on his breathing to calm himself down. Say the rhyme, he thinks. Conquer your fear. He repeats it to himself, trying to match his breathing to it, to suppress the stirring panic, tapping his fingers against Geralt’s forearms: _S_ _ay, pluck the herb where hawthorns quiver_ _a_ _nd wish a wish_ _to be delivered._ _If_ _you_ _come not now,_ _you_ _need come never_ _for I shall be_ _q_ _ueen of these faeries forever._ _Say, pluck the herb –_

“Jaskier”, Geralt says very quietly. “Why did she think you wanted to take me to her court tonight?”

The panic surges again, clawing at Jaskier’s chest, and he withdraws, stumbling backwards. “I don’t know”, he says, and it tastes bitter on his tongue.

“Jaskier”, Geralt repeats, but Jaskier can’t bear to hear it. Blood rushing in his ears, he turns around, and starts walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> **Content Warnings** : Depiction of a scene in which Jaskier experiences strong discomfort when he and Geralt are being stared at. No one expresses hostility towards them and the focus on the scene is on them garnering dangerous attention from faeries.  
> (return to top)
> 
> Zhenya adamantly forbid me to name this chapter "Knightfall". Can we get an F in the chat for this missed opportunity... :(  
> That leaves us with only one more to go. Promise, it'll all end well.


	5. glamour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (jump to the end notes to see the mild content warnings for this chapter)
> 
> Well...welcome to the final chapter. While we're here, I want to mention [daryshkart's art on Tumblr](https://daryshkart.tumblr.com) as a source of inspiration, especially [this](https://daryshkart.tumblr.com/post/190829073939) and [this ](https://daryshkart.tumblr.com/post/612031954556223488) piece. Without seeing them in March, I might have told a similar story, but it wouldn't have been set in the modern world and probably wouldn't have included faeries.

On the other side of the stream, the sounds of the restaurant are gone and even the street lamps appear faint and far away. Jaskier pulls himself up from where he’s hit the ground, rubs his hands against each other in an attempt to get rid of the dirt and gravel, and then stands motionless for a few seconds. He’s engulfed in darkness and almost perfect silence, broken only by the rustling of leaves in the wind and the murmuring of running water. Keeping his back turned to the parking lot, he hesitates, unable to keep himself from waiting for either the sound of a car door or for Geralt calling after him again.

There’s nothing, though, and, strung up on adrenaline he doesn’t know where to put, he starts to shiver in the cold almost immediately, shifting his feet, hands vibrating a nervous rhythm on the side of his legs until he physically cannot stand still anymore. As soon as he starts walking again, he can’t seem to stop. With the lights of the parking lot quickly vanishing behind him, Jaskier’s breath comes out in little clouds against the backlit blue of the darkening sky. He follows the trail along the course of the stream, feet bouncing on the soft grass and moss, and feels himself walking faster and faster yet, and the sheer wrongness of what he’s still not thinking about almost feels like a physical manifestation in the dark, always following one step behind, clawing at his back, or at the back of his mind.

Mourning willows hang low over the stream to his left, forming an arching hallway, but even in the low light Jaskier thinks he can make out pilewort and primroses growing on the riverbed. For a brief moment, he can vividly imagine what the air will smell like in summer, heavy and sweet with buttercups, meadowsweet, water avens, and he’s hit by a memory so strong he feels lightheaded: Bumblebees and fireflies tumbling over the shallow water, the giggling in between the reeds, and the moth-winged faerie who used to live under the bridge to the churchyard, singing cruel songs about past wars and battlefields as he was sloshing through the stream barefoot, sullying his new dress while trying to catch fish with his hands.

He drums his hands faster, trying to pull himself together. Fuck, he thinks, he needs some connection to the real world or he’ll lose it, something that’s neither faerie realm nor memory lane – and then it hits him, and he almost drops his phone tugging it out of his too-tight jeans pockets.

“ _Jaskier_.”

Yen’s voice on the other end of the line is just as unimpressed and leveled as he’d hoped. He pictures her sitting in front of her vanity, doing her nails, completely unaware of the turmoil he’s found himself in once again, and his relief at this proof of normality is cast out in a shaking exhale.

“Yennefer”, he says, still trying for an equally bored voice but unable to stop a slight quiver from creeping in, and she sighs long-sufferingly.

“Where are you? Don’t tell me you managed to get abducted with Geralt tagging along. That would be a new low even for you.”

“Well”, Jaskier says, words tumbling out of his mouth before he can reel them in. “Funny story, actually, we, er, we ended up in my hometown. By accident. Can you believe?”

There’s a _clonk_ that sounds like a glass being put down rather unceremoniously, indicating that Yen is more likely drinking wine on the couch snuggled up with Triss. She probably just paused an episode of _Xena_ with a flick of her wrist, gracing the unsuspecting air that has nothing to do with Jaskier’s continuing fuck-ups with a death stare. “No”, she says, “no, I literally cannot believe that you didn’t tell Geralt to continue driving at the sight of this shithole. Why are you still there? Where are you?”

“I’m – not sure you want to hear me say it”, Jaskier says with a resigned sigh, letting the sobering quality of her words wash over him.

“ _Spit it out_.”

“I’m outside town, if you must know, probably close to the church. Geralt and I, we – had a fight –”, well, he thinks, that’s technically true, in the literal sense, “– and, um, I walked off.”

“Fucking hell, I’d call him and send his arse there immediately, if the man could bring himself to get a phone”, Yen seethes. “It’s after nightfall, Jaskier, what were you thinking?”

He stops walking, stands still, and the thoughts at the back of his mind tumble all over each other again. Somehow, it feels as though his whole body is shifting against the inside of his skin, itching, scratching, and he –

– wills himself to speak. “Something strange happened and –”

– it just felt like he wouldn’t be able to bear it if Geralt –

“What _exactly_ ”, Yen says, “counts as strange after one has angered a whole faerie court by playing pop songs on a lute? Just asking out of sheer curiosity.”

Despite himself, Jaskier feels the hint of a laugh hitch in his throat. “We cannot all be 63 years old and settled down for life, Yen”, he says.

“Is that Jaskier?”, he hears Triss’s muffled voice in the background. “Tell him what we discussed.”

Yen sighs again, this time so deeply that it sounds as if she’s holding the weight of all the world on her shoulders. She holds her hand over the speaker and Jaskier takes the moment to flip his phone and shine a light on where he has actually ended up. Funnily enough, he spots the bridge to the churchyard he was just thinking about a meter right ahead of him. It’s much smaller than in his memory: More of a plank that someone threw across the streambed than anything else, but if he remembers correctly, crossing here and walking over the church grounds will get him back to the main road much quicker.

“Hi Jaskier, it’s Triss”, he hears, and puts the phone back to his ear, coating his surroundings in darkness once more. “Yen isn’t emotionally mature enough to say this, so here I am.”

“What else is new”, Jaskier says with a grin. He shuffles closer to the plank taking small steps, careful not to slip on the grass, and then pokes it with the tip of his shoe once it’s in reach.

“There are some cities in the region with low faerie activity and a promising freelance market for spells and potions. I’ve made a list, if you want to have a look later.”

Jaskier takes a step on the plank. Huh. It holds.

“So, we were speaking about you having to leave town, and we decided –”

Unfortunately, Jaskier never finds out about that because the plank chooses this exact moment to snap in half without warning, sending him falling unceremoniously into the cold water. He yelps in surprise, sloshing around and trying desperately to find something to hold on to, hands sliding off reeds and slippery stones. Then his mind catches up and he realizes that he’s merely sitting on his bum in shallow water.

For a moment, he can’t bring himself to get up. He’s soaked and muddy anyway, and when he gropes around for his phone, he finds it dead and gone. He stares blankly at its dark screen for more than a few seconds before uselessly shoving it in his pocket. “Will this god damned day ever fucking end?”, he says loudly, to no one in particular, and that’s when he spots it.

It's not a horse. It’s horse-sized, maybe, looming massively over Jaskier in the dark, and horse-shaped, with hooves sloshing in the muddy water of the stream and white puffs of breath coming from its nostrils, faintly tinted red by the ember-like glow of its eyes. But it shifts in and out of focus as if it’s resisting his very attempts to take it in, appearing dripping wet one moment, snorting and shaking its head, spraying droplets, then dry and shimmery the next. Still, fear refuses to stir in Jaskier’s chest. He remembers Geralt telling him about having tracked a spirit that had taken the form of a horse and entertains that thought for a moment, but then the horse-thing looks at him and tilts its head in a way that horses really shouldn’t, and instead of fear, he feels something leaden and heavy drop in his stomach.

Of course, he thinks gloomily, it can never just be a ghost or monster for him, and then he finds the name fitting the thing. There’s nothing else to do, not when he’s sitting in a stream in the dark and staring up at the kelpie who could kill him in a heartbeat, and the hitched laugh from earlier finally escapes his mouth and comes out hollow and hysterical.

The kelpie looks back at him. Water swashes over Jaskier’s thighs as it steps closer and lowers its head, huffing another warm breath that smells faintly of fish, and of decay.

“I could tell you an interesting secret”, the horse who is not a horse says. Her voice sounds surprisingly normal, flippant, even, as she keeps her red eyes fixed on him. Jaskier doesn’t move. He still has one hand shoved in the pocket of his jacket, clutching his phone, and he’s cold, and he might die, and he feels like crawling out of his skin.

The kelpie is waiting, and he tells her: “I’m still not making any bargains.”

“I could give you an appetizer”, she says, exhaling another cloud of breath. “Make you reconsider. I’m sure you’ll find something to trade for some questions then.”

It’s the end of the race and there’s nowhere else to run. No more distractions. He’s tired, worn out, beaten, and all he can do is stare at the kelpie without really seeing her as the things he’s been pushing to the back of his head, avoiding to look, finally fall forward. The knight asking him to bring Geralt to the court as if she thought he could command him, and him having been able to trick the faeries for the lute, properly trick, whatever Geralt says, because they didn’t want it back in the end, they wanted his voice and his songs. He thinks about his grandmother again, teaching him to look the other way and to pretend not to see them, saying, “you can’t scare them off, Jaskier”, and “we can’t touch them”, and he feels his hands thrumming in protest where the thorned armor has torn through his skin, feels the phantom sensation of the knight’s skin against his hands, and thinks about baring his teeth to scare off persistent troublemakers. There’s a faint memory floating almost within reach, of jasmine and bumblebees and the faint sound of a radio, and of chasing off the faerie that was sitting in ambush for the cat.

Jaskier sits, motionless, as if he’s the one hit by a spell this time, and the kelpie says: “You’re not human. You’re fae.”

Nothing happens when she says it out loud. It’s just _there_ , hanging in the air, and he instantly knows it to be true. There’s neither relief nor a sense of dread, and the universe has the audacity to continue in the same moment without missing a beat. Jaskier digs his fingers into the mud of the streambed, and the kelpie keeps looking at him with her glowing eyes, just looking. Tempting. Promising.

Jaskier knows he shouldn’t – striking a bargain now could be more dangerous than his stunt with the lute, more than angering an entire court. But his skin is itching, and he’s tired, and suddenly, he wants to know. With an effort that seems inhuman, he pushes himself up on his feet and stands in the middle of the stream.

“What do you want in return?”, he asks, and his eyes don’t miss how the kelpie curiously eyes his palms. He quickly wipes the blood on his jeans, ruining yet another pair of them, and hides them behind his back. “No eating”, he says firmly. “And no drowning.”

“No fun”, the kelpie says, and snorts. “What can you give me in return?”

“A name”, Jaskier hears himself say before he has the chance to actually think about it, damning himself to wait and hope that the kelpie doesn’t kill him for the audacity of it. He watches her nervously as she shifts her weight in contemplation and then nods. “Fine”, she says, and it takes all of Jaskier’s resolve not to wheeze audibly at that. “I’ve had my share of names in the past, but if I like the one you pick for me, I might tell you what I know.”

She steps closer to him, maybe to give him the chance to properly look at her, but all that registers with Jaskier is how fucking large she is, and the smell that she’s emanating – not like horse at all, but like mud and decay and rotten fish. Jaskier has to try even harder not to let out another hysterical laugh. Surreal as the situation is, only completely ridiculous names pop up in his head: Destroyer, and, oh fuck, fish names, Pike? Bream? Is the ridiculous amount of time he spent playing Stardew Valley during the winter coming back to haunt him now? What’s the name of that fish with the red –

“Roach”, he blurts out, and wishes he could smack himself a second later. “Like the fish, I mean the fish – the fish, not the insect.” He points to his face in a vague gesture, all while trying to at least shuffle backwards a bit. “Red eyes, you know?”

He stares at the kelpie, faintly regretting once more not having drawn up that will, and then she’s throwing her head to the side, huffing out a breath that almost sounds like laughter. “Fine”, she says again. “Roach – I’ll take it for three answers.”

Jaskier lets out a slow, controlled exhale and closes his eyes for a second, but he can’t pause, not now. “First question”, he says, noticing how worn his voice sounds. “How is it possible that I never found out?”

The kelpie – Roach – shuffles, turning her ears in his direction. “You’re wearing a very powerful glamour”, she says. Keeping her glowing eyes fixated on Jaskier, she steps even closer to him. “If it’s powerful enough to fool another faerie, it’s powerful enough to fool you. And it’s not just your looks – even when touching iron, you probably don’t feel more than a slight discomfort, isn’t that right? Nausea, maybe, when you’re exposed to it for longer, but nothing more.” She snickers. “A true piece of craftsmanship.”

Jaskier doesn’t allow himself to dwell on that. “Secondly”, he presses on. “Who put it on me?”

“Your parents”, Roach says with something akin to empathy in her voice, “before they placed you in the crib of the human baby they’d stolen. Faerie court royalty, they do that as a pastime sometimes. For the novelty of it.” She blows some warm, fishy air on his face. “Sometimes they try to get their child back later. On a whim.”

“What happens to the human child?”, Jaskier asks before he can stop himself, and Roach snickers again. “Stays a child”, she says. “Lost forever, cannot go back, and that was your last question.” She bumps her head against his chest, causing him to stumble backwards. “Care for a ride?”

“We agreed that there wouldn’t be any drowning involved”, Jaskier snaps, angry at himself for wasting the third question.

“Pity”, Roach says. “When a little swim can be so insightful sometimes.” She slowly lowers her head to the water, and then huffs, “You’re not gonna look?”

Jaskier feels like he’s navigating through the thick texture of a dream. As he lowers himself to his knees again, baring, he thinks faintly, his neck to the kelpie, his own reflection on the rippled surface comes into – well, not focus, but in sight in the red light of Roach’s eyes. His first thought is that he doesn’t look all so different, but the longer he stares, the more uncanny the differences become. His teeth look sharp like needles as he bares them, and his fingers, as he raises them to his face, are longer, each one exhibiting an additional phalanx. The most astonishing addition, though, are the smooth white horns growing out of his temples, circling upwards: A breath trembling in Jaskier’s mouth, he instinctively reaches to touch them, but in contrast to his mirror image on the water, his fingertips are moving through thin air.

“Powerful glamour”, Roach comments and blows on the water, causing the image to ripple. Something is bubbling up Jaskier’s throat again and it takes him a second to realize it’s laughter – giddy laughter that he finally lets loose, dancing through the quiet. His skin has stopped itching, and he can’t take his eyes off his laughing self in the water.

“Jaskier?”

The image fades as Roach takes a step back towards the riverside, melting into the shadows. Jaskier gets up, squinting in the vague direction of the voice, saying nothing, his heart leaping to his throat. Then, Geralt steps into view, probably using his night vision to spot Jaskier standing in the middle of a stream, soaked to the bone, next to a giant faerie horse.

“Jaskier”, he says, voice full of relief, and halts.

“Geralt, there you are!” Jaskier tries for a cheerful tone, but it comes out dull. He wipes his hair out of his face and then puts his hands on his hips to stare up at him. “Are you following me again? You should really find another hobby.”

“I am”, Geralt says, somewhat helplessly, and Jaskier laughs, unfiltered happiness and relief mixing with a slight unease. Fuck, he thinks, if he has to experience yet another emotion tonight, he might just die. “You are?”, he asks, “even if I might put a charm on you and whisk you away under the earth?”, and uncertainty seeps into his voice.

Geralt stares at him for a long moment without blinking. Then he seems to make a decision and shuffles closer to the riverside and the remains of the bridge, extending his hand towards Jaskier. And all of his anxieties, well, they’re there, but they’re faint against the relief of seeing Geralt, and against the comfort of feeling his warm hand against his as he pulls him out of the stream and tentatively rests it on Jaskier’s arm to stabilize him. It’s Geralt’s language, in a way, Jaskier realizes – showing up, offering help, coming back to him.

He waits and looks.

“I didn’t know what to think”, Geralt says with a deep frown. “In that moment. It could have been –”

“What?”, Jaskier huffs with a lopsided smile. “A long con? Pretending to be human for five years just to mess with you?”

“I know”, Geralt says. “Jaskier, I know it’s still you.”

“Yes, it’s still me”, Jaskier says, his voice catching in his throat. “And I don’t –”

“I know.”

Jaskier exhales shakily. “I’m sorry you got hurt because of me, Geralt, and I know you’re gonna say you’re fine, but that’s not the point. I won’t let that happen ever again.”

“I am fine, though”, Geralt says, and his eyes glint with mirth when Jaskier sighs in response. Then his face softens into a smile. “At least now I know why you kept asking me for my real name. I never knew what to make of it.” He hesitates. “What do you want to do now?”

There’s endless possibilities, and maybe Geralt half expects him to say he wants to vanish in a tree trunk forever, but Jaskier just sniffles a bit. “I think”, he says with emphasis, wiping his nose on his soaked sleeve, “I want to get the fuck out of here.”

Geralt gives him another one of those tiny smiles that are mostly in his eyes. “Let’s go, then”, he says. Then he looks over Jaskier’s shoulder and frowns again, disappointment seeping into his voice. “Wait, where did the horse go?”

* * *

They drive only long enough for Geralt to deem them sufficiently far away from the court, and then a little bit further yet. The place they stop at is yet another road with a few houses strewn around pretending to be a town, but there’s no running water and no forsythia bushes, which seems different enough for the time being, and Jaskier supposes the faeries curiously pressing their faces against the playground fence as they walk past don’t pose that much of a danger anymore.

Geralt insists that they eat, which is how they find themselves leaning against a dusty house wall next to a kebab shop at 10:50 in the evening, overlooking the empty main road and the moths fluttering around the streetlights. While Jaskier munches his semi-warm, falafel-stuffed bread with abandon, unable to keep himself from stuffing as much as possible into his mouth at any given time, Geralt watches silently. From time to time, he holds the one liter bottle of cola he purchased alongside in Jaskier’s direction to prompt him to drink as well, and otherwise, he takes his sweet time with his own food.

“Ah y’not hungwy?”, Jaskier asks as he swallows down his last bite after a record time and tries his hardest not to burp.

“Witcher metabolism”, Geralt says, dropping a single onion he picked from his bread into his mouth with a content smile.

They start walking in the direction of the hotel in silence, and it feels comfortable, somehow, or maybe Jaskier’s brain is just too exhausted to continue working in overdrive. He keeps glancing over to Geralt next to him, watching the way his gaze is transfixed on his greasy kebab with a little smile, and feels at ease.

Well, apart from the fact that his clothes are still wet and his shoes are squeaking at every step and he’s really beginning to freeze, of course.

“You know”, he says, unable to enjoy the quiet for more than a minute after all, “I could write a whole ballad about this, oof, twelve stanzas at least. _The Changeling_ , no, wait –”, he holds up his fingers, “I can already hear it – _The Lost Prince_.”

Geralt grunts. “You don’t know if you’re a prince. Could be a viscount for all you know.”

“The _audacity_ ”, Jaskier huffs, “I am clearly at least a full-fledged count, thank you very much. I can feel it”, and he slaps a hand on his soaked shirt for emphasis, “in my bones. They’re made of the stuff of legends, if I may say so myself.”

He catches Geralt rolling his eyes and shoves his elbow into his ribs in retribution, accidentally hitting something vital and causing him to almost choke on a piece of bread.

“Maybe you shouldn’t –", Geralt says after he’s chewed and swallowed properly, “– draw more of your folk’s attention to you. Not after you finally fulfilled your wish to punch one of them. And with the possibility that they want you back. Unless that’s what you want?”

Now he’s the one to shoot Jaskier a sideways glance, and Jaskier recognizes the concern in his eyes. And, well, he’s right, but at the same time –

He hums. “I mean, I don’t want to speak too soon”, he says, outlining what’s to come with a broad flourish of his hands. “But, like, what are they gonna do about it, exactly? I don’t plan on coming back to that town any time soon and it’s not like they hold any kind of power over me.”

“Hm”, Geralt says thoughtfully.

“And also, no, the fuck, I don’t want them to take me back”, Jaskier sighs. “Definitely not entering that particular tree stump, thank you very much. I mean, I can’t say I’ll never want to engage with my heritage more, but I’d like to think I’m not the right person to dabble in court politics and royalty, it just all sounds so awfully – oh, are we there?”

They’ve stopped in front a run-down timber-framed house that looks as if it’ll probably be rather equipped with flowered curtains than yellow wallpaper. Geralt is carefully taking another bite from his kebab, apparently determined not to rush it. “You can wait inside”, he says. “Ask for a room. I’ll eat up and call Yen from the reception.”

Jaskier rubs his index fingers against his thumbs and tries very hard to keep himself from saying –

“ _A_ room? As in, a singular room to share?”

Geralt huffs a tiny laugh. “I’ll leave that up to you”, he says.

* * *

It’s a small room they find themselves in once again, and it smells faintly of lavender and mothballs, and both the curtains and the bed sheets are donning a very floral pattern indeed. As Jaskier takes a seat on the edge of the bed in his pajamas, wrapped up in one of the duvets, he feels as if a century has passed since they spent last night in the other hotel. He rubs his fingers absentmindedly against the coarse linen and watches Geralt kick off his boots and store his swords in the closet and remembers thinking he’d never see him again after the end of this adventure. Maybe feeling him look, Geralt turns over his shoulder and gives him a little smile, and Jaskier realizes he’s not so sure anymore.

But still –

“About the thing that happened”, he says tentatively, his voice once again too loud against their silence, “yesterday, I mean.”

Geralt looks at him. “When we had sex”, he clarifies, and Jaskier buries his head in his hands. “How can you be so prosaic”, he complains, guiding his tone through a few dramatic ups and downs, “about an event that was, quite frankly, life changing?”

“Hm.” There’s a pause, and then the bed dips as he sits down next to Jaskier. “I can never tell”, Geralt says, slowly, “if you’re trying to flirt or make fun of me.”

“If you must know”, Jaskier tells the palms of his hands, muffled and with a clogged nose, “I’m being very serious indeed but hiding it behind a kilometer-thick wall of jokes due to an ill-fated and misguided sense of self-preservation.”

Geralt hums.

“Tell me if I’m wrong”, he says after another long pause, “but does that mean you’ve been flirting with me for the past five years?”

Jaskier peers at him through his fingers for a few seconds. Then he sits up straight, pulling his blanket-burrito tighter around himself, and thinks, damn it, he’s bested a knight in hand-to-hand combat in a parking lot earlier this evening.

He takes a deep breath as if to prepare for a monologue and sniffles a bit more.

“I like you a lot”, he says, and once he starts talking, the rest of the words fall out of his mouth like a clumsy avalanche. “I really do, Geralt, just so you know, and it meant something to me and it still does, if it does for you too, that is. I want – I’d like to stay with you for a while longer – if you want me to.”

Geralt stares at him, maybe stunned into silence, and then he extends his arms in invitation and pulls Jaskier close to him when he collapses into the hug. He feels Geralt’s arms wrap around his shoulders, cradling him against his chest, pressing his cheek against Jaskier’s temple, and hears him mumble into his ear, “It means something to me, too.”

Jaskier closes his eyes, all but melting against Geralt, savoring his warmth and comfort and reassurance, and they stay like that for a long while, Jaskier’s breaths falling into a rhythm with Geralt’s slower ones. Then Geralt carefully guides them both to lie on the bed, Jaskier in his blanket and Geralt in his black leather jacket. He feels like giggling at the contrast but before he gets the chance, Geralt swiftly rearranges the blanket around them both and wraps his arms around Jaskier’s shoulders again, pulling him close and pressing a soft kiss to the top of his head. Unable to help himself, Jaskier lifts his gaze to meet Geralt’s, and as he sees him nod in the soft light of the bedside lamp, he presses a gentle kiss against his lips. They’re badly chapped, this time, and he faintly tastes like onion and kebab sauce, so Jaskier breathes a silent laugh against him before he leans in once again, losing himself in the feeling of his mind going quiet, focusing only on the sensation of Geralt’s rough lips against his own.

After a few moments, though, a thought crosses his mind and he breaks the kiss, leaning away slightly to squint at Geralt with his eyes crossed. “Wait”, he says, “if I’m fae, does that mean I can just go back home? Take off my glamour, tell the lot of them to fuck off about the album, and that’s it?”

Geralt brushes the back of his fingers across Jaskier’s jawline and, frankly, doesn’t look as if he’s using his full brain capacity to consider this possibility. “I’m not sure”, he mumbles, eyes still trained on his lips, “let’s think about it tomorrow”, and Jaskier laughs, and then they’re kissing again, a little more heat behind it this time, but still without rushing. Geralt’s thumb is drawing small circles at the back of Jaskier’s neck, and Jaskier sneaks his cold fingertips under his leather jacket, only for Geralt to startle and yelp when they make contact with his skin.

Jaskier grins. “You’re very warm”, he says contently, and plants soft kisses against his scruffy cheeks, “and I’m still freezing”, and with that, he sticks his feet between Geralt’s legs. Geralt just hums lazily and draws him closer, though. “You’re in luck”, he mumbles, “I happen to be very glad you’re here, so all retribution will have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Oh?”, Jaskier says in an interested tone, and kisses him again. He decides to lick into his mouth a bit this time, just to tease, only for Geralt to break away again almost immediately. This time, he’s breathing a bit more heavily. “Are you curious to see what you look like without your glamour?”, he asks.

“I saw it”, Jaskier mumbles into his neck, running his fingers a little bit up higher Geralt’s back. Then, another laugh bubbles up his throat like pearls. “I have _horns_.”

“You know”, Geralt says, and then seemingly gets distracted by Jaskier’s fingers for a few seconds as they come to rest on his stomach, lightly, “with Yen and Triss and Ciri and me, you wouldn’t need to wear a strong glamour all the time. If you didn’t want to. You could learn how to remove and renew it.”

Jaskier needs a moment to process that.

“One thing at a time”, he says with a lopsided smile, and leans back in to kiss him again. Intrigued by the way Geralt seems to melt against him, he pushes him slightly onto his back, sneaking a leg between his and running his fingers up his chest beneath his shirt, brushing lightly against his nipples. He swallows Geralt’s breath when it hitches, relishing in the feeling of being held – in knowing that Geralt’s arms wrapped tightly around him mean that he cares, that he wants to be here with him.

“Did you really”, Jaskier pants against him as he breaks the kiss once again, “suspect I was fae just because I wanted to know your name? I’m sorry, but that’s what you implied earlier, and I’m a little bit hung up on it –”

Geralt growls lowly and tries halfheartedly to pull him closer again, but Jaskier pushes himself up against his chest and stares down at him with a broad grin. “Nu-uh”, he tuts, “I need to know, because if you did, I have to tell you, anyone would have asked you that. That’s a perfectly normal reaction if someone is using their fantasy OC _of Rivia_ as a surname.”

“It wasn’t just that”, Geralt protests, and then gets distracted again when he realizes Jaskier’s pajama shirt has hitched up a bit and he can rest his hands on his hips, drawing circles on his bare skin with his thumbs. Then he sighs. “It was also your headaches in my car”, he acquiesces. “Your hoarding of all that shiny stuff. Always paying me back without fail when I tried to invite you to something. And your music when you’re playing it live – clearly some magic in that.”

“Fuck”, Jaskier says, looking at Geralt with wide eyes. “ _Fuck_ , I can do magic!” A giddy laugh tumbles out of his mouth, and once it’s escaped, others follow. He sits up properly on Geralt’s legs, the blanket pooling at his hips, and tries to process the thought. It’s too much, and at the same time, he can’t get enough of it – he wants to lock the thought away for a while to get used to it, and at the same time, his fingers are itching to try it out, just a tiny trickery or illusion. “Fuck”, he says again, breathlessly. “None of those fuckers can ever do anything I don’t want to me again”, and then he laughs some more as Geralt looks at him with serious and fond eyes.

“No, they can’t”, Geralt says very seriously. Jaskier lets himself flop onto him, causing him to let out a slight exhale on impact, and pulls the blanket over both of them again. “What else?”, he demands, resting his chin on Geralt’s chest.

“Hm”, Geralt says, pushing Jaskier’s hair out of his face gently, and then he grins. “Your teeth are a bit too sharp. And I almost saw you eat a dead pigeon once.”

In the safeness of their entangled legs and flowery duvets, the memory is just that: Something that happened, once, and Jaskier grins back at Geralt. “I only considered it for a second and, fuck, was I disturbed by that later.”

“But I always got caught up on”, Geralt says lowly, “the fact that you could touch iron.”

“Powerful glamour”, Jaskier echoes Roach’s words. “A true piece of craftsmanship.” Despite himself, he finds himself reaching up to where his horns would be, once again touching nothing but air. There’s a slight melancholy, he thinks, to finding a missing part of yourself in your thirties, and for a few moments, he lets himself be carried away by images and memories after all: The exhilaration of stealing the lute, and his focused creativity when he was writing his songs, channeling all the things he couldn’t talk about. Then, the thrill of catching all of the attention, and it turning sour again when the faerie court wanted him for themselves. Playing for them all night long until his fingers were bleeding, with his only remaining memory being that of his flayed fingertips dancing over razor sharp strings. And now, the whole mechanism of how the world works for him is tipped sideways just a fraction, opening paths and possibilities and dangers in equal amounts.

Geralt lightly taps his fingertips against his temple, maybe to guide him back to the moment they’re in right now. “You can take it off”, he says. “If you want. We’ll figure out later how to renew it.”

Jaskier looks at him, splayed below him with a soft smile on his lips, his hair pouring all over the pillow, resting, solid, _here_ , and laughs. “And here I was so sure you’d tell me to think things through”, he says. Happiness is staining his voice in warmth, and he wiggles further up to kiss him more.

* * *

“I’ve been thinking”, Jaskier says, later, when they’re both lying on their backs next to each other, legs entangled, sweat drying, “about my music. My artistry. Of course one could argue that with this newfound information revealed, I could continue to sing about faeries with no danger or repercussions –”

Geralt rolls onto his side to give him a sharp look. “– but I’ve learned my lesson”, Jaskier amends quickly. “Which means”, he says with a grin as he rolls over as well, “I’m in need of new inspiration. A muse, one might say.”

“Oh no”, Geralt says.

“Oh _yes_. I’m already feeling the ideas pour in in a rush of inspiration – Geralt, the White Wolf of Rivia, risking his life to protect humankind from monsters they don’t even know about. All I need is a few, teeny-tiny opportunities to accompany you on a contract and I’m sure I could write a whole concept album about you.”

“You know”, Geralt says dryly, “if you do that, ‘Rivia’ might end up with a Wikipedia entry after all.”

Jaskier pulls him close to rest his forehead against his and mumbles, “Five years, I can’t believe you got hung up on me wanting to know your _name_ for _five years_.”

Geralt hums and smiles back at him. “I think”, he says, “we’ve known each other for long enough now”, and as he leans forward to whisper something in his ear, giddy laughter spills from Jaskier’s lips once again.

_The End._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> **Content Warnings** : Mentions of drowning.  
> (return to top) 
> 
> I'm not saying a few weeks from now Geralt will _definitly_ look out of his bedroom window at night and see Roach standing outside because she followed him home...I'm just saying it's very likely. Listen, it breaks my heart that Geralt didn't get to meet her properly.
> 
> Thank you for sticking with this story until the end! I hope reading it brought you a bit of the fun I had writing it.
> 
> ([Link to Tumblr post](https://threephasebird.tumblr.com/post/618665088934658048/) | [Link to photo set](https://threephasebird.tumblr.com/post/618946930342526976))


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